Case report: Insulinoma masquerades as epilepsy - quantitative EEG analysis

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Authors

KOSTOLANSKÁ Natália KLIMES Petr KOČVAROVÁ Jitka PIKULOVÁ Hana STRÝČEK Ondřej BRÁZDIL Milan DOLEŽALOVÁ Irena

Year of publication 2024
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Frontiers in Neurology
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Medicine

Citation
Web https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2024.1371055/full
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2024.1371055
Keywords hypoglycemia; insulinoma; acute symptomatic seizures; epilepsy; EEG postprocessing
Attached files
Description Insulinomas are rare gastrointestinal tumors with an incidence of 1-3 per million inhabitants annually. These tumors result in excessive insulin production, culminating in hypoglycemia. Such hypoglycemia triggers various central nervous system (CNS) manifestations, including headache, confusion, abnormal behavior, and epileptic seizures, which can lead to misdiagnosis as epilepsy. This case report documents a 46-year-old male who presented seizure-like episodes. Episodes occurred mainly during the night, lasting several minutes to hours. Initial seizures were characterized by bizarre behavior and altered responsiveness. Over time, seizure frequency, complexity, and severity escalated. We managed to record two episodes during long-term EEG and report, as the first ones, the detailed quantitative EEG analysis of these hypoglycemia-related events. EEG changes preceded the development of clear-cut pathological motor activity in tens of minutes and were present in all investigated frequency bands. The development of profound motor activity was associated with other increases in EEG power spectra in all frequencies except for delta. The most pronounced changes were found over the left temporal region, which can be the most susceptible to hypoglycemia. In our patient, the seizure-like episodes completely disappeared after the insulinoma removal, which demonstrates their relationship to hypoglycemia.
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