from Part III - Specific Conditions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 June 2021
The EEG is poorly sensitive and specific to detect lesions compared to neuroimaging; its practical use is to determine the functional consequence of the lesion. Focal dysfunction (physiologic) may occur without an associated neuroimaging abnormality. Postictal states and hypoperfusion are examples of physiologic dysfunction; these are often reversible (disappear on repeat testing). Focal dysfunction causes disruption of the background architecture (wakefulness and sleep), asymmetric responses on activation procedures, and focal slowing. Severity of the focal dysfunction may be estimated based on the abundance of slowing, attenuation of amplitude, loss of reactivity, and increase of slower frequencies. Sporadic, intermittent, or fluctuating focal slowing that is reactive to external stimulation or endogenous state changes (such as arousal) may indicate physiological dysfunction. Focal intermittent rhythmic (monomorphic) delta activity such as Lateralized rhythmic delta activity (LRDA) specifically indicates epileptogenicity. It should be treated like an epileptic discharge despite the lack of a sharpness. Look for epileptic discharges that may accompany focal slowing. Focal slowing may occur in isolation, bilaterally, or in the setting of diffuse cerebral dysfunction.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.