Researchers examined health care records of 65 US veterans before and after confirmed diagnosis of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) using video-EEG (VEEG) monitoring. Researchers found that post diagnosis there were:
- a significant decrease in PNES-related outpatient visits
- a significant increase in non-PNES related outpatient visits
- increased attendance of psychiatric outpatient visits.
This new evidence shows that VEEG-confirmed PNES diagnosis in US veterans can reduce key measures of non-psychiatric/PNES-related resource utilization and show appropriate increase in psychiatric outpatient visits. However, further study is needed to investigate the increase in non-PNES-related outpatient visits in this patient population.
Nunez-Wallace KR, Murphey DK, Proto D, et al. Health resource utilization among US veterans with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures: a comparison before and after video-EEG monitoring. Epilepsy Res. 2015;114:114-121.
