Predicting the Functional Outcome of Adult Patients with Status Epilepticus

Abstract

Patients that survive status epilepticus (SE) may suffer from neurological and cognitive deficits that cause severe disabilities. An effective scoring system for functional outcome prediction may help the clinician in making treatment decisions for SE patients. Three scoring systems, namely the Status Epilepticus Severity Score (STESS), the Epidemiology-Based Mortality Score in Status Epilepticus (EMSE), and the Encephalitis-Nonconvulsive Status Epilepticus-Diazepam Resistance-Image Abnormalities-Tracheal Intubation (END-IT), have been developed in the past decade to predict the outcomes of patients with SE. Our study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of these scores in predicting the function outcomes both at and after discharge in SE patients. We retrospectively reviewed the clinical data of 55 patients admitted to our neurological intensive care unit between January 2017 and December 2017. The clinical outcomes at discharge and at last follow-up were graded using the modified Rankin Scale. Our research indicated that STESS was the most sensitive and EMSE was the most specific predictive scoring method for SE outcome prediction. On the other hand, END-IT predicted functional outcomes in SE patients poorly. We concluded that STESS and EMSE can accurately predict the functional outcomes in SE patients both at discharge and the follow-up period.