EEG and ECG recordings of pharmacoresistant epilepsy patients who underwent intracranial video-EEG telemetry were reviewed. Ultra-short-term HRV expressed as standard deviation of the mean before, during and after the subclinical seizure pattern was determined in 10 s epochs. Statistics were done with a linear mixed regression model. Values are expressed as mean ± SD.
26 patients (38 ± 10 years, 13 of either gender) have been included; 7 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) of either side as well as 7 (right-sided lesion) and 5 patients (left-sided lesion) with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE). A total of 74 subclinical events (2–3 per patients) were analysed. Pooled data for HR only weakly increased during and after the subclinical pattern with a mean HR of 80 ± 10 bpm before to 82 ± 11 bpm during (p = 0.03) and 81 ± 10 bpm after subclinical patterns (p = 0.06). HR was higher in patients with left TLE as compared to right TLE (p = 0.001). In FLE patients only, the change in HR was correlated with the spatial extent of electrographic pattern localised (p = 0.03). Mean HRV did not change during or after subclinical patterns. HRV was; however, lower in TLE patients with left-sided subclinical patterns as compared to right-sided patterns (pre-event HRV left 13 ± 6 ms, right 34 ± 16 ms).
Our data revealed only minimal changes in autonomic cardiac function during highly localised electrographic seizure patterns and this had no localising/lateralising value.