Long-term Cardiac Monitoring in Epilepsy

The purpose of this research study to investigate, classify, and quantify chronic cardiac rhythm disorders in three groups of patients with epilepsy (intractable focal epilepsy, controlled focal epilepsy and symptomatic generalized epilepsy). Patients with epilepsy have a higher risk for cardiac complications than the general population. With this study, we aim to understand more about these potential complications in patients with epilepsy and assess if treatments for cardiac problems should be evaluated more carefully in patients with epilepsy.

Most cardiac studies have investigated patients with intractable focal epilepsy who have a high risk for co-morbidities, accidents, injury and SUDEP. This is confounded by the major antiepileptic drug burden in this population. Very little, however, is known about the risk of cardiac arrhythmias in patients with a lower seizure burden, i.e. patients with infrequent focal seizures and/or those without secondarily generalized convulsions. Furthermore, no chronic cardiac data is available in patients with epileptic encephalopathies especially given the fact that some of these patients are known to carry mutations that increase the risk for cardiac arrhythmias.In addition, periods of reduced cerebral blood flow during tachy or brady arrhythmias may exacerbate seizure severity and during. Diagnosing and treating these arrhythmias may not only prevent adverse cardiac events, but also reduce seizure burden. This study primarily aims to compare the frequency of cardiac rhythm abnormalities in patients with epilepsy of different severity, assess the long-term cardiac risk and evaluate the possible preventive role of anti-arrhythmic agents and/or cardiac pacemaker/defibrillator needs.