Biomedical subjects

H Forta

Publications and source records attributed to H Forta.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1998

Primary reading epilepsy.

This is a report of a 23-year-old-man with primary reading epilepsy. He had had three generalized tonic-clonic seizures, each time beginning with visual illusions and occurring while reading a political science text in English with complicated words. He also described tightness and stiffness in the jaw and musculature of mastication for the past 2 years, which only lasted for a few seconds and only appeared while reading political science books in English. He noted that this sensation was associated with misreading of foreign and difficult words and disappeared when he stopped reading. This case report supports the view that difficult words and misreading are provocative factors evoking seizures in reading epilepsy.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

Childhood occipital epilepsy: seizure manifestations and electroencephalographic features.

Childhood epilepsy with occipital paroxysms (CEOP) is an idiopathic localization-related epilepsy. A typical seizure in CEOP begins with visual symptoms, followed by hemiclonic seizures, complex partial seizures or generalized tonic-clonic seizures. Benign nocturnal childhood occipital epilepsy (BNCOE), characterized by nocturnal seizures with tonic deviation of the eyes followed by vomiting, has the same electroencephalographic features as CEOP. In this study, we report the seizure symptoms and electroencephalographic features of 21 cases with CEOP or BNCOE. Out of these patients, nine had BNCOE, six had CEOP, four had CEOP and BNCOE and the remaining two belonged to the incomplete syndrome because of no paroxysmal discharges in EEG. When the patients with BNCOE awoke from sleep, they had tonic deviation of the eyes and could describe visual symptoms. Patients with CEOP had seizures beginning with visual symptoms followed by loss of consciousness but no generalized convulsions. In three cases, in addition to the occipital spikes, independent centro-temporal spikes were recorded and in another three cases generalized spike-wave discharges were recorded. Such a combination suggests the idiopathic nature of these epilepsies. We concluded that in the diagnosis of CEOP and BNCOE, the seizure symptomatology is important even if the EEG can be considered normal.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Electrophysiological investigations and prognosis in idiopathic facial palsy.

In 35 patients with idiopathic facial palsy (FP) clinical and electrophysiological examinations were performed during the first month. The patients were followed up until the 4th month to establish the prognostic value of different electrophysiological tests. Electrophysiological investigations consisted of the recording of blink reflex (BR) and the recording of the direct response (DR) elicited by the stimulation of the facial nerve. FP recovered satisfactorily in 80% of the patients. In patients in whom marked paresis remained, DR amplitude ratio of the affected side to the healthy side (DRr) was less than 25%. BR indicated a poor outcome, if it was still absent at the first month. In general, BR and DR measurements gave similar information about prognosis. Rare exceptions could be explained by the representation of different mechanisms by these two methods, demyelination and axonal degeneration.

Adolescent↗