Welcome to the Coping With Epilepsy forums - a peer support community for folks dealing (directly or indirectly) with seizure disorders. You can visit the forum page to see the list of forum nodes (categories/rooms) for topics.
Please have a look around and if you like what you see, please consider registering an account and joining the discussions. When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no ads, access to members only (ie. private) forum nodes and more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!
Reuters Health
Sudden Death During Epileptic Seizure Recorded on Ambulatory EEG
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Dec 21 - An EEG recording of a sudden death that occurred during an epileptic seizure show abrupt irreversible cerebral electrical shutdown. "In other words," physicians in the UK report, "the death occurs secondary to primary brain failure."
Dr. B. N. McLean, at Royal Cornwall Hospital, and Dr. S. Wimalaratna at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford report the case of a woman with epilepsy who died during a seizure while undergoing ambulatory EEG.
According to their paper in the December issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, the middle-aged woman had a history of epilepsy since age 4. Her seizures had been refractory to treatment with multiple antiepileptic medications.
At the time of death, she was taking lamotrigine 1000 mg/day and sodium valproate 1200 mg/day. She was found dead on the floor of her home.
The EEG recording, set up at 13:00 the previous day, showed increasing cerebral activity as the day progressed. "Prolonged bursts of high amplitude spikes began to appear towards midnight," the report indicates, and continued to worsen until paroxysmal activity developed into continuous spike wave discharges, with a seizure onset at 08:27:18.
"The seizure activity abruptly terminated at 8:28:14 and the EEG became a 'flat line'." Based on movement artefacts that decreased in frequency on the recording, death occurred at 08:31.
Drs. McLean and Wimalaratna cite two similar case reports published in 1997 and 1998, in which a seizure was followed by sudden electrical silence. They conclude that cardiorespiratory failure that leads to death is such cases is centrally mediated by "cerebral electrical shutdown."
They suggest that "timely intervention (attempts at resuscitation) at early stages may reverse the consequences of cerebral electrical shutdown."