Abstract Details

A Review of Video Ambulatory service at a DGH

Introduction:

We are a small neurophysiology department in a district general hospital in the southwest of England serving a population of about 400,000.

We do not have a video telemetry service. As part of an equipment review and update, we purchased a video ambulatory EEG system (VA-EEG), which has been newly introduced to the UK. 

Aim:

To evaluate the value of the addition of the video ambulatory system to the EEG service.

Method:

Retrospective review and evaluation of the addition of video-ambulatory system using data collected during the first year of clinical use. 

Criteria for using video ambulatories were subjective and decided according to the clinical presentation and predicted compliance.

Results:

The majority of patients were referred for the diagnosis of epilepsy or non-epileptic attacks.  Twenty-three VA-EEG recordings were performed in 12 months (24.4% of all ambulatory recordings). Fourteen (61%) had traditional ambulatory EEG carried out in the past and thirteen of these had episodes on previous recordings.

Sixteen of the VA-EEG studies (70%) reported clinical episodes (6 epilepsy, 9 not epileptic, 1 patient both epileptic and non-epileptic events).

The VA-EEG also allowed identification of a large portion of unreported seizures (42.9% of the total seizures and 18.5% of total events recorded).

Comment/Discussion:

After overcoming a few technical issues we found the system easy to use and the only additional patient compliance required was the need to keep the patient in camera shot during the recording.

We were able to correlate clinical findings with EEG abnormalities more easily and with time-locked video to offer a more definitive diagnosis, helping identify both epileptic and non-epileptic events.

We feel that there is improvement in the diagnosis of epilepsy as well as non-epileptic events which were difficult to diagnose without video recording.

We were able to prevent a few patients travelling to a tertiary centre to have video telemetry.

Conclusion:

We feel that VA-EEG is a good compromise for small departments such as ours where video-telemetry is not an option for a number of reasons.

Video-Ambulatory system has an advantage over video-telemetry as the patient does not have to be confined to a room during the recording and doesn’t require an expensive hospital stay. Thus VA-EEG system is an adjunct to video-telemetry rather than a replacement or an alternative.

 

TitleForenamesSurnameInstitutionLead AuthorPresenter
DrShyamaAlagodaMusgrove Park Hospital
MissLauraBarnettMusgrove Park Hospital
MrsDianeBoothmanMusgrove Park Hospital
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