Electrographic Seizure Management and Neurobehavioral Outcomes in Critically Ill Children

Context: Electrographic seizures are common in critically ill patients leading to increased use of resource-intense continuous EEG monitoring for seizure identification and management. When identified, electrographic seizures are generally treated with anti-seizure medications, but there are very limited data available regarding optimal treatment in terms of specific medication selections or overall management strategies. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has a formal ICU EEG Monitoring Pathway aiming to standardize EEG monitoring and seizure management. This is a single-center prospective observational study of patients undergoing clinically indicated EEG monitoring to identify risk factors for electrographic seizures and create prediction models guiding limited EEG monitoring resources to the patients at highest risk for seizures, and also to evaluate the current seizure management strategy in terms of safety.

Objectives: The primary objective is to identify risk factors for electrographic seizures in critically ill patients and use these risk factors to create and validate a seizure prediction model. The secondary objective is to evaluate the safety of a targeted and timely electrographic seizure identification and management strategy among critically ill patients guided by a CHOP ICU EEG Monitoring Pathway.

Study Design: Single center observational study of consecutive patients undergoing clinically indicated EEG monitoring.

Setting/Participants: Single-center study of critically ill children in the Pediatric ICU at CHOP undergoing clinically indicated EEG monitoring and seizure management.

Inclusion criteria

• Care in the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Pediatric ICU.
• Clinically indicated continuous EEG monitoring.
• Age > 1 month to 18 years.

Exclusion criteria

• Admitted for Phase 2 (intracranial) EEG monitoring.
• Intensivist expects to discontinue technological support in the next two days given underlying medical or neurological problems.