Seizure sleep monitor12/18/2023 More study is needed to better understand the variables involved and to better determine what is occurring in individual patients, the researchers say. The effect of the seizure is secondary to the natural slowing of the heart rate during sleep, the researchers believe, but the two together can, in some instances, prove deadly. The results suggest that seizures during sleep are more likely to lead to dangerously slow heart rate. But the greater sleep depth prior to a seizure, the slower the patient's heart rate was likely to become, the scientists found. Some seizures caused heart rates to increase. The researchers monitored how deeply the patients were sleeping when the seizures occurred. The participants were, on average, diagnosed more than 20 years previously. In total, the researchers evaluated 101 sleep seizures in 41 patients, with a median age of 40.5. The patients were admitted to the UVA Epilepsy Monitoring Unit between February 2018 and August 2019, and all were 17 or older. To better understand the effect of sleep seizures, UVA researchers led by Schomer and Mark Quigg, MD, MSc, monitored the brain and heart activity of people with epilepsy as they slept. (While SUDEP can occur when patients with epilepsy are awake, the majority of cases occur during sleep.) He died of SUDEP while sleeping at age 20. Hopefully with further study we can try to identify individuals who are at an increased risk and work to prevent this devastating outcome."ĭoctors have been unsure how seizures in sleep can cause death, such as was the case with young Disney Channel star Cameron Boyce in 2019. We know there is an increased risk during sleep and if seizures are poorly controlled. "The mechanism of SUDEP, or Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy, is still not fully understood. This decline was more pronounced when the patients were asleep," said Andrew Schomer, MD, of UVA's Department of Neurology and the UVA Brain Institute. When we looked at the heart rates for patients with epilepsy admitted to the hospital, many of them develop tachycardia following a seizure, but a subset of patients have a decreased heart rate. "We have been trying to better understand the cardiac changes around the time of a seizure in patients with epilepsy. Together, in some instances, this can prove deadly, causing Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy, or SUDEP. Seizures also disrupt the body's natural regulation of sleep-related changes. Both sleep and seizures work together to slow the heart rate, the researchers found.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |