HOUSTON – Predictors of poor outcomes in patients with status epilepticus admitted to the neurointensive care unit include complex partial status epilepticus (CPSE), refractory status epilepticus, or the development of nonconvulsive status epilepticus (NCSE) at any time during the hospital course, according to results from a single-center study.
“Not a lot of data exist as to what predicts the poor outcomes and what’s known about the outcome in patients with status epilepticus,” lead study author Advait Mahulikar, MD, said in an interview at the annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society. To find out, he and his associates retrospectively reviewed data from 100 patients with status epilepticus who were admitted to the neurointensive care unit at Detroit Medical Center from November 2013 to January 2016. Variables of interest included patient demographics, initial presentation, refractoriness to treatment, presence or absence of underlying etiology, past history of epilepsy, and use of benzodiazepines on admission. Another variable of interest was NCSE, either from initial presentation or developed during the course of convulsive status epilepticus. A good outcome was defined as a Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) score of 4 or 5, and a poor outcome was defined as a GOS score of 1-3.
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Dr. Advait Mahulikar
Neither age nor gender predicted poor outcome, and there was no difference in outcome between structural and nonstructural causes of status epilepticus. However, prior history of epilepsy was a strong negative predictor of poor outcome. In fact, only 14 of 70 patients (20%) with a prior history of epilepsy had a poor outcome (P less than .01). “The theory is that [these patients] were already on treatment for epilepsy in the past and that affected their outcome in a positive way,” Dr. Mahulikar explained.
When outcome was analyzed based on status semiology on initial presentation, poor outcome was seen in 16 of the 37 patients (43%) with CPSE (P = .04); 9 of 48 patients (19%) with generalized convulsive status epilepticus, all patients with myoclonic status epilepticus (n = 2), and 3 of 9 (33%) who had NCSE (P less than .01). The type of status epilepticus was unknown for four patients, one of whom had an unknown outcome. NCSE at any time during the hospital course (including at presentation) was seen in 31 patients. Of these, 14 (45%) had a poor outcome (P = .02).
The mean number of ventilator days was higher in patients with NCSE than in those without NCSE (9.2 vs. 1.6 days; P = .0001) and also higher in those with new-onset seizures than in those without (7.8 vs. 2.9 days; P = .001). Analysis of methods of treatments revealed that only 7 of 31 (22.5%) patients who received adequate benzodiazepine dosing had poor outcomes (P = .2247). “The take-home message is to diagnose NCSE as early as possible because I think some patients who come in initially we may attribute to metabolic or autoimmune causes, and we tend to miss NCSE sometimes due to delay in diagnosis of NCSE,” Dr. Mahulikar said. “Treat aggressively at the beginning.”
He reported having no financial disclosures.