Amplitude-integrated electroencephalography for neonatal seizure detection. An electrophysiological point of view

Abstract

Seizures in the newborn are associated with high morbidity and mortality, making their detection and treatment critical. Seizure activity in neonates is often clinically obscured, such that detection of seizures is particularly challenging. Amplitude-integrated EEG is a technique for simplified EEG monitoring that has found an increasing clinical application in neonatal intensive care. Its main value lies in the relative simplicity of interpretation, allowing nonspecialist members of the care team to engage in real-time detection of electrographic seizures. Nevertheless, to avoiding misdiagnosing rhythmic artifacts as seizures, it is necessary to recognize the electrophysiological ictal pattern in the conventional EEG trace available in current devices. The aim of this paper is to discuss the electrophysiological basis of the differentiation of epileptic seizures and extracranial artifacts to avoid misdiagnosis with amplitude-integrated EEG devices.

Amplitude-integrated electroencephalography improves the predictive ability of acute bilirubin encephalopathy

“…Numerous data on neonatal brain maturity can be obtained through quantitative reading and scoring of aEEG graphics (14). In recent years, aEEG has been widely used in various fields of neonatology, such as seizure detection (15,16), preterm infants (17,18), metabolic disorder (19), brain damage (20), and hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (21,22). However, as a relatively new method of brain function monitoring, whether aEEG could be used to facilitate the early diagnosis of ABE is still unclear.…”