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Postoperative delirium mimicking epilepsy

2000· letter· en· W2045725033 on OpenAlexfundno aff
R. Makker, W. Yanny

Bibliographic record

VenueAnaesthesia · 2000
Typeletter
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicAnesthesia and Sedative Agents
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersQueen's University
KeywordsMedicineAnesthesiaMidazolamUnconsciousnessEpilepsyIsofluraneDecompressionSurgeryLidocaineSedation

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

We read with interest the article by Reuber et al. (Anaesthesia 2000; 55: 74–8) on postoperative pseudostatus. We think this paper deals with an important clinical scenario about which little has been reported so far. We wish to share our experience in managing a 47-year-old female with a history of long-standing epilepsy who had pseudoepileptic seizures due to postoperative delirium. She had suffered from epilepsy since the age of 14 years, for which she was treated with carbamezepine 300 mg qds and primidone 250 mg qds. Although her last epileptic fit was 14 years ago, she suffered status epilepticus following a decompression of carpal tunnel under general anaesthesia 9 years ago and an epileptic fit associated with collapse following lidocaine and epinephrine dental injection a year ago. Otherwise, she had several uncomplicated operations, mainly for congenital lumbar canal stenosis. During her current admission for elective laminectomy of the 5th lumbar vertebra for decompression of L5 and S1 nerve roots, she was extremely anxious on pre-operative assessment. She failed to relax despite 5 mg of midazolam and 1000 mg of thiopental for induction, and required isoflurane. Muscle relaxation was induced with succinylcholine and anaesthesia was maintained with isoflurane. Her operative course was uneventful. However, during recovery she had two episodes of generalised shaking movements lasting for 3 min each, but not associated with loss of consciousness, incontinence or tongue biting. Her oxygen saturations were maintained during recovery. She remained confused, drowsy but rousable. In view of the epileptiform movements she was intubated and ventilated on the intensive care unit overnight. However, these abnormal movements, which were thought to be ‘atypical’ seizures, persisted in the ensuing week despite the addition of intravenous phenytoin to her anti-epileptic medication. Her CT head scan and blood tests were normal. She also started hallucinating during abnormal movements. Her EEG, when she was confused, agitated and exhibiting abnormal movements, showed no epileptic activity. She was treated for postoperative delirium with droperidol 5–10 mg qds and her epileptiform shaking movements stopped. She also stopped hallucinating and remained well subsequently. Delirium during the recovery period has been mainly reported in elderly patients [1]. Typical diagnostic criteria for delirium include perceptual disturbance, incoherent speech, disorientation, memory lapses, and reduced awareness and attention. Our patient was at risk of developing postoperative delirium because of epilepsy, anticonvulsant drugs, previous numerous operations and anxiety. She suffered from hallucinations and agitated behaviour associated with abnormal movements, which mimicked epilepsy. She responded to neuroleptic medication, droperidol – the preferred treatment for delirium. These features suggest that her agitation and shaking during the postoperative period were not due to epilepsy.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMeta-epidemiology (narrow), Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)
Consensus categoriesInsufficient payload (model declined to judge)
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: Not applicable
GenreCandidate signal: Commentary · Consensus signal: Commentary
Teacher disagreement score0.019
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.002

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.024
GPT teacher head0.266
Teacher spread0.242 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.

Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreCommentary

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2000
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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