View clinical trials related to Epilepsy.
Filter by:Electroencephalography (EEG) records electric activity of the brain using electrodes placed on the scalp. EEG is an important tool in the diagnostic work-up of patients with epilepsy. Specific types of sharp EEG discharges (epileptiform discharges) are associated with patients with epilepsy. The International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology (IFCN) has recently published a set of six operational criteria for identifying epileptiform discharges. At least four criteria need to be present in order to classify a discharge as epileptiform. These criteria are largely based on expert opinion and have not been validated yet. It is not clear what the sensitivity and specificity of these criteria are, and which combination of these criteria are optimal. Each criterion is based on visual assessment. However, it is not known what the inter-rater agreement of these criteria are. EEG is traditionally inspected in sensor space, i.e. in the recording channels. Advances in signal analysis made possible reconstructing the electric currents in the regions of the brain generating them, and displaying the signals in the source space, instead of the sensor space. The objectives of this study are: to determine the inter-rater agreement of the IFCN criteria by visual analysis in sensor space, to determine the combination of criteria with the best accuracy (sensitivity and specificity) and assess the accuracy of evaluating the discharges in source space. The raters will analyze EEG recordings from 100 patients, from two groups: consecutive patients with epilepsy and consecutive patients with non-epileptic paroxysmal episodes. EEG was recorded during long-term video-EEG monitoring. As reference standard, the investigators used the evaluation of the patients´ habitual clinical episode. The performance of the criteria in sensor-space and the analysis in source space will be compared with the unrestricted expert scorings.
This Compassionate Use Program (CUP) is setup to provide study patients with continuous access to Brivaracetam (BRV) for the time period between closures of the long-term follow up studies N01125, N01199, N01372, N01379, and N01315 and when BRV is commercially available.
The HEP2 study is designed to better understand the challenges of living with focal seizures that do not respond to medication, by following 205 people with medication-resistant focal epilepsy over two years to measure changes in health status, healthcare costs, quality of life, and biomarkers of epilepsy severity and treatment response.
Multicenter global post-market registry of subjects diagnosed with drug resistant epilepsy and treated with the VNS Therapy System.
The investigator aims to examine the clinical utility of WES, including assessment of a variety of clinical outcomes in undiagnosed pediatric cases.
As a potential solution to address high rates of depression and anxiety seen in epilepsy patients and poor mental health care access, this trial aims to carry out treatment for depression and anxiety directly in the epilepsy clinic. Patients that meet eligibility criteria, including significant symptoms of depression and/or anxiety, will be enrolled in the intervention. The intervention will consist of an initial prescription for an FDA-approved medication to treat depression/anxiety and telephone-based chronic care management plan for repeated symptom measurement and side effect surveillance. The purpose of this pre-piloting limited study is to streamline recruitment, intervention and outcome assessment process in preparation for a randomized, controlled pilot of the intervention.
Establishing good oral health-related habit is challenging among younger children, especially for preschool children with special needs, as they have physical, mental, sensory, behavioural, emotional, and chronic medical conditions that requires health care beyond the routines. Existing evidences showed that children with special needs have poorer oral health status and more challenging behaviours than their counterparts in main stream schools. Visual pedagogy, such as social stories, have been applied to teach a variety of skills or behaviours to individuals with special needs. They are short stories demonstrating the target skill or behaviour, and then the readers are expected to perform the target skill or behaviour following the demonstrations. Giving the evidence that children with special needs can understand complex situations and learn new practices by using those stories, we expect to apply a package of structured social stories to modify oral health-related behaviours (tooth brushing, healthy eating, dental visit), and thereby, improve oral health status among preschool children with special needs. Establishment of good oral-health related behaviours in early childhood will benefits children in their future life. Additionally, visual pedagogy-assisted oral health education is relatively easy and safe to implement. If proven effective, social story-based preventive care can be recommended to special children globally.
The purpose of the study is to assess the feasibility of a Creative Artists Program intervention with epilepsy and headache patients admitted to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center for care by the Department of Neurology.
Brivaracetam (BRV) is a new antiepileptic drug approved in March 2016 by Health Canada for the adjunctive treatment of focal epilepsy in adults. While randomized controlled trials represent the gold standard in measuring intervention efficacy, the generalizability of these findings to usual clinical practice remains uncertain. The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of BRV as an adjunctive treatment in epilepsy. The secondary objective of this study is to evaluate the tolerability of BRV as an adjunctive treatment in epilepsy. This is a prospective and multicentre post-marketing observational study. All consecutive adult patients (i.e. aged at least 18 years) in whom BRV is introduced in participating medical centres, ambulatory or hospitalized, will be approached to participate in the study. The investigators will exclude individuals with generalized epilepsy as those aged less than 18 years, in order to respect current Health Canada indications. The investigators will exclude individuals cognitively or physically unable to complete the study questionnaires. The investigators will collect data from participants during three clinical visits with their regular treating physician. These will be the baseline visit, the 3-month visit (three months following the initiation of BRV), and the 6-month visit. At each visit, the investigators will collect data on seizure type(s) and frequency. Study participants will also complete four questionnaires to measure irritability, anxiety, depression, and quality of life. There will be two primary study outcomes. These are: a) mean percent change in monthly seizure frequency; and b) proportion with at least a 50% decrease in seizure frequency. There will be several secondary study endpoints: a) mean change in irritability [measured using the Brief Irritability Test (BITe)]; b) mean change in generalised anxiety [measured using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder - 7 (GAD-7) scale]; c) mean change in depression [measured using the Neurological Disorders Depression Inventory (NDDI-E) scale]; d) mean change in quality of life [measured using the 7-item Quality of Life Inventory in Epilepsy-10 (QOLIE-10) scale]; e) the proportion of individuals that are seizure free, and f) change in distribution of seizure types (e.g. focal with motor seizures, generalized absence). The investigators will query for all adverse effects the participant may experience.
The purpose of this study is to compare the results of combining two anesthetic medications (dexmedetomidine and propofol) in low doses with a standard dose of a single drug that is commonly used to provide sedation/anesthesia for MRI studies in young children (propofol). The drugs used for the MRI scan in this study will be chosen randomly. Half the patients will receive small doses of propofol and dexmedetomidine. The other half will receive propofol administered constantly throughout the scan. Other drugs that may be used include sevoflurane and nitrous oxide at the start of the sedation (for placing an intravenous), lidocaine (to reduce the pain of propofol injection) and glycopyrrolate (to prevent the heart rate from decreasing too low. The investigators will record 5 additional blood pressures and heart rates. If additional medications are required to complete the scan, the investigators will administer whatever is necessary. At the end of the study, the investigators will have an observer record the time it takes for participants to spontaneously open eyes , to be able to drink liquids and/or eat and to behave as before the study. Also, it is very important that the investigators find out from participants about changes in behavior, or if eating or sleeping habits were unusual following completion of the study. For that reason, the investigators will call participants in a day or so following the MRI scan. The investigators expect to recruit 40 children between the ages of 12 and 72 months for the study and hope to have the study completed in December 2018.