Ambiguous epileptic syndrome: from the point of view of adults

To review a series of neurological problems that we frequently encounter in our day-to-day clinical practice and which are difficult to diagnose correctly because of the type of presenting symptoms and clinical features they have. In spite of the fact that a good patient record and detailed neurological examination are still essential, use of long-term (LT) video-EEG monitoring is sometimes indispensable given the ambiguity of the clinical signs and symptoms. Selected subjects were young adult patients of both sexes who had been referred to the Epilepsy Unit at our hospital for study, due to the existence of doubts about their diagnosis. A detailed patient record was drawn up for each patient, and they were also submitted to a neurological examination and LT video-EEG monitoring, which lasted between two and six days. In some of these patients, the diagnosis was modified following their admission and important changes were introduced in their treatment. LT video-EEG is an important test when it comes to establishing a correct neurological diagnosis in patients with mixed or poorly defined clinical symptoms.