Premium
Effectiveness of the ketogenic diet in a broad range of seizure types and EEG features for severe childhood epilepsies
Author(s) -
Beniczky S.,
Jose Miranda M.,
Alving J.,
Heber Povlsen J.,
Wolf P.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
acta neurologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.967
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1600-0404
pISSN - 0001-6314
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0404.2009.01303.x
Subject(s) - ketogenic diet , electroencephalography , epilepsy , medicine , clinical significance , anesthesia , psychology , pediatrics , psychiatry
Background – Ketogenic diet (KD) is an effective treatment for pharmacoresistant epilepsy: more than half of the patients show a greater than 50% reduction in seizures. Objective – To identify clinical or electroencephalogram (EEG) variables predicting the response to KD. Methods – Clinical and EEG data were retrospectively analysed from 50 consecutive patients treated by KD for severe, pharmacoresistant epilepsy. Most of the patients (70%) had retarded mental and motor development. Results – Three months after the start of the KD two‐thirds (33) of the patients were responders (had a more than 50% reduction in seizure frequency). The presence of epileptiform EEG discharges in the temporal region correlated with an unfavourable response ( P = 0.03). The presence of bilateral synchronous epileptiform discharges, and the presence of complex partial seizures approached significance but all other variables did not. Conclusions – Our results further support that KD is efficient in a wide variety of epileptic patients with a broad range of EEG features. However, patients with epileptiform discharges in the temporal region are less likely to achieve therapeutic response.