What is it about?
The Standard, visually inspected EEG, is a non-invasive and relatively inexpensive tool to examine cerebral functioning. A sizeable literature attests to the frequency of abnormalities detected by this test in various psychiatric populations. The main question has been the "so what". What if we do detect an abnormality in a psychiatric patient? Does it influence diagnosis or treatment?
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Why is it important?
EEG is a widely available clinical test and in the hands of a knowledgeable clinician, it can be utilized to help many treatment resistant patients.
Perspectives
Conditions like panic disorder, other dissociative disorders and repeated, particularly unmotivated, aggression, can all reflect some form of an epilepsy spectrum disorder. The identification of epileptic activity in these patients should lead to the trial of a mood stabilizing anticonvulsant. Similar situation exists in many non-epileptic Autism Spectrum patients. Finally, the presence of slowing on the EEG should also guide further work up including imaging or neuropsychology testing.
Nash Boutros
University of Missouri System
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The forsaking of the clinical EEG by psychiatry: how justified?, CNS Spectrums, August 2017, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s1092852917000505.
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