Pseudoseizures are psychological reactions induced in a patient suffering from anxiety and mental trauma of the brain that influences several muscles to contract simultaneously that mimics seizure-like conditions. Pseudoseizures are mostly seen in people who have been victims of child abuse.
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Pseudoseizure is an older term for events that appear to be epileptic seizures but, in fact, do not represent the manifestation of abnormal excessive synchronous cortical activity, which defines epileptic seizures. They are not a variation of epilepsy but are of psychiatric origin.
The ICD-10 diagnosis code for conversion disorder with seizures or convulsions is F44. 5. This code is applicable to dissociative convulsions. Alternate terms used to indicate PNES are: non-epileptic attack disorder, functional seizures, stress seizures, psychogenic seizures, and pseudoseizures.
In the past, people referred to pseudoseizures. However, the use of “pseudo” can imply that a person is pretending to have a seizure, which is not the case. For this reason, the preferred term is now psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES). A doctor may also refer to them as psychogenic nonepileptic episodes (EPEE).
Medical professionals previously referred to PNES as “pseudoseizures.” This term is outdated and not generally preferred by neurologists. “Pseudo” is a Latin word meaning false. However, nonepileptic seizures are as real as epileptic seizures and are not consciously or purposefully produced.
Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures are episodes of movement, sensation, or behaviors that are similar to epileptic seizures but do not have a neurologic origin; rather, they are somatic manifestations of psychologic distress.
Psychogenic non-epileptic events (PNEE), sometimes called psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES), are behavioral episodes (“events”) that look like epileptic seizures. For a brief time, the person is not able to control the way his or her body moves, senses things, or thinks.
During an attack, findings such as asynchronous or side-to-side movements, crying, and eye closure suggest pseudoseizures, whereas occurrence during sleep indicates a true seizure.
Pseudoseizures can also manifest in children and adolescents, occurring as early as 5 or 6 years of age.
PNES occur from wakefulness, while the occurrence of ES from sleep is common. However, PNES patients may also provide a history of events “arising from sleep”.
Many people who suffer from PNES initially react to a diagnosis of any conversion disorder with disbelief, denial, anger, and even hostility. However, people who experience pseudo-seizures are truly suffering, and, once the diagnosis sinks in, there is often a sense of relief that the condition is not life-threatening.
PNES are attacks that may look like epileptic seizures but are not caused by abnormal brain electrical discharges. Instead, they are a manifestation of psychological distress. PNES are not a unique disorder but are a specific type of a larger group of psychiatric conditions that manifest as physical symptoms.
The diagnosis of PNES typically begins with a clinical suspicion and then is confirmed with EEG-video monitoring. However, ictal EEG may be negative in some partial seizures and may be uninterpretable because of artifacts. Movements can generate rhythmic artifacts that mimic an electrographic seizure.
Frequently, people with PNES may look like they are experiencing generalized convulsions similar to tonic-clonic seizures with falling and shaking. Less frequently, PNES may mimic absence seizures or focal impaired awarneness (previously called complex partial) seizures.
Regarding the length of PNES, it is patient-related and may also vary in a same patient. This duration can range from a minute to several minutes, up to a dozens of minutes. This last scenario would evoke PNES status, with a threshold of 20–30 min according to the authors [20].
They have been previously called pseudoseizures, but that term is mislead- ing. These seizures are quite real, and people who have them do not have conscious, voluntary control over them.
Can psychogenic nonepileptic seizures cause brain damage or be fatal? A PNES episode cannot by itself cause brain injury or death. However, if during the episode, the patient suffers a blow or physical injury, the situation changes.
Clues to a possible diagnosis of PNES can be discovered by eliciting a seizure history including onset, typical semiology of the seizure, and treatment . Patients with PNES are likely to have seizures more frequently with more hospital visits than patients with epilepsy.
The gold standard for diagnosing PNES is continuous video electroencephalography, or vEEG. This should be done only after carefully eliciting a description of the typical seizure presentation, also known as semiology, from the patient or a family member. Only a video recording that captures an episode resembling the reported semiology with no concomitant epileptiform activity seen on EEG (vEEG) can be used to make a definitive diagnosis. If multiple seizure types are reported, then each type of seizure should be visualized on vEEG because of the possible co-occurrence of PNES with epileptic seizures.
The prognosis of the disorder, like its etiology, is varied. With no intervention, slightly more than one-third of 260 patients with PNES were seizure-free at 1-year follow-up. 16 Psychological factors that predict poor prognosis include dissociative tendencies, somatization, negativism, and depression. Keep in mind, however, that seizure frequency may not always correlate with quality of life, and patients who are seizure-free with untreated comorbid psychiatric disorders may be as impaired as those who continue to experience seizures.
The results from a small (N = 19) open-label, 5-month prospective study of patients with PNES showed that venlafaxine reduced the number of seizures by more than 50% in 15 patients with an average dose of 189.71 mg daily. 21 It should be noted that participants with psychiatric comorbidities were not excluded from SSRI studies.
As mentioned above, one of the conditions in the differential diagnosis of PNES is epilepsy. Table 3 summarizes various sites of seizure origin and likely semiology. (For a more complete description of epileptic semiology, see the article by Noachtar and Peters. 14)
Although psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) are events that appear to be similar to seizures, they are not caused by abnormal electrical brain activity. Instead, they are thought to have an underlying psychological cause.
However, a routine EEG that lasts 20 to 30 minutes has a 1% chance of capturing even an epileptic seizure and is an insufficient substitute. Ambulatory EEG has also not been shown to be a reliable diagnostic test for PNES.