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Biomedical subjects

A E Yankovsky

Publications and source records attributed to A E Yankovsky.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Preictal headache in partial epilepsy.

The authors studied clinical characteristics in 11 patients with intractable focal epilepsy and preictal headache (PIHA) using a standardized interview. Headache was frontotemporal, ipsilateral to the focus, in nine patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and contralateral in one with TLE and in one with frontal seizures. Migrainous features were found in four. After surgery, all seven seizure-free patients and two with rare seizures were free of PIHA. It may be a useful lateralizing sign in patients with TLE.

Adolescent↗

Transformation into daily migraine with aura following transcutaneous atrial septal defect closure.

A link between migraine with aura and cardiac right-to-left shunting has been previously reported. Abortion or decreased frequency of migraine with aura attacks after atrial septal defect closure has been reported in the literature. We report the first case of transformation of migraine with aura into a daily pattern after atrial septal defect closure. A 48-year-old male who had been suffering from rather infrequent attacks of migraine with sensory and visual aura underwent transcutaneous closure of an atrial septal defect. His migraine attacks changed into a daily pattern the day following the procedure and remained so for 6 months. This change in pattern may be related to a changed intra-atrial pressure after the closure or some other unknown factor.

Heart Septal Defects, Atrial↗

Postictal mixed transcortical aphasia.

Postictal aphasia has been described in left temporal lobe seizures. It may be of fluent, non-fluent or global type. We present here a patient who displayed signs of mixed transcortical aphasia (MTCA). The patient was a 67 year old man who underwent excision of a left frontal parasagittal meningioma in 1987. Since then he has been treated with phenytoin for generalized tonic-clonic seizures (GTCS). He was admitted in status epilepticus. On awakening, the patient was non-fluent with palilalia and echolalia. His repetition was relatively preserved but all the other language functions were impaired. This picture faded away within a few hours. Brain CT, performed during this postictal state, was normal except for signs related to frontal craniotomy. SPECT, which was performed after language functions returned to normal, displayed left frontal, cingular and insular hypoperfusion. The postictal language dysfunction of the patient corresponded to MTCA. Although our case has frontal, he had no other structural lesion that could explain either diffuse ischemia of the left hemisphere or watershed areas secondary to the generalized seizures. The uniqueness of this case is the combination of postictal MTCA with good prognosis.

Aged↗