Ways to Lower Misdiagnosis Rates of Neonatal Seizures: Solomon Moshe, MD; Elissa Yozawitz, MD

"For the more subtle types of seizures, we really need that EEG to determine whether it’s a seizure or not.”

Misdiagnosing different types of seizures in the neonatal stage can have significant consequences for a newborn, especially if they are then put on disease-modifying therapies (DMTs). These seizures can occur with clinical manifestations or without clinical manifestations, therefore increasing the need to standardize the use of electroencephalography (EEG) use to evaluate and correctly diagnose this patient group.

A recently published modification of the 2017 International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) Classification of Seizures and Epilepsies, did just that. A Neonatal Seizures Task Force that comprised of international epilepsy specialists called for the emphasis of EEG in the diagnosis and included a classification of seizures types relevant to this age group. ILAE past president Solomon Moshe, MD, and Elissa Yozawitz, MD, were among those involved with the task force.

Moshe, Charles Frost Chair in Neurosurgery and Neurology, and Yozawitz, director of Neonatal Neurology, both at Montefiore Medical Center, sat down with NeurologyLive to discuss ways to improve misdiagnosis rates in the neonatal stage.

To read the modifications, click here.

REFERENCE

Pressler RM, Cilio MR, Mizrahi EM, et al. The ILAE classification of seizures and the epilepsies: modification for seizures in the neonate. Position paper by the ILAE Task Force on Neonatal Seizures. Epilepsia. Published February 1, 2021. doi: 10.1111/epi.16815