CLINICAL PRESENTATION AND DIAGNOSIS OF SOMATOSENSORY AURAS IN PATIENTS WITH EPILEPSY

Abstract

This article provides a detailed description of clinical presentations of different types of somatosensory auras, that is, the different types of numbness or paresthesia sensations, as well as of rarely seen somatosensory delusional perceptions. The objective of this article is to provide a detailed clinico-electroencephalographic and neurovisual analysis of a group of patients experiencing somatosensory auras. Test group included 15 patients (М-11, F-4, average age – 13 ± 8 years) with etiologically different forms of partial epilepsy, i.e., the idiopathic, symptomatic or cryptogenic epilepsy. It was established that in these patients the interictal epileptic pathological EEG activity was significantly more often registered in the central temporal or parietal lobe but significantly less frequently in the temporal lobe in its own right. In 47% of cases changes on MRT correlated with clinical presentations of epilepsy and pathological changes on EEG. The authors compare the results obtained with previously published ones. The article contains conclusions and recommendations that are helpful in daily medical practice.

Keywords

• epilepsy
• epileptic aura
• somatosensory aura
• electroencephalography
• video-eeg monitoring
• magnetic resonance tomography