Iranian Journal of War and Public Health

Background: Epilepsy is one of the most common brain diseases that characterized by recurrent and chronic seizures. Electroencephalography (EEG) is most useful diagnostic procedure that IED is checked on EEG for diagnosing of epilepsy and its types. Purpose: Few studies have assessed the time to occurrence IEDs on EEG of patients with epilepsy consecutively. The goal of this study is to determine risk factors of IED in patients with epilepsy.

Method & Materials: This is a retrospective study of all patients with epilepsy referred to Neuroscience Center in Khatam-Al-Anbia hospital from 2007 to 2009. The time of recurrence of IED on EEG was recorded during half of hour. The patients with at least one IED in this duration were included in the study, and then 56 patients were assessed. The recurrent events model was used to fit this data and identify risk factors of gap time between IEDs. Results: Among the patients, 41 (73%) were male and 19 (34%) were war wounded. Mean age and epilepsy duration were 34 ± 12.5 and 17 ± 9 years respectively. The recurrent events model showed that age (P=0.0124, HR=0.97) and war wounded (P=0.0007, HR=3) had a statistical significant relationship with gap times between IEDs.

Conclusion: Age and veteran are significant risk factors for length of gap times between IEDs. Considering that there are factors that influence gap times between IEDs, the length of routine EEG can be variable by characteristics of patients.