Clinical characteristics and factors associated with in hospital mortality of convulsive status epilepticus in adult patients admitted to neurointensive care unit

BackgroundStatus epilepticus (SE) is a common neurological emergency; convulsive SE has a distribution with peaks in children and elderly than adult population.AimTo determine the clinical characteristics and factors associated with in hospital mortality in adult patients admitted to the neurointensive care unit (NICU).MethodsA retrospective analysis of the clinical characteristics and outcome of adult patients (aged 18 years and above, below 60 years) with CSE admitted into the NICU was performed. The outcome was classified as alive or death in NICU. The differences between the alive and dead patients for data collected were analyzed using t tests and chi-square test for continuous and categorical variables respectively. Spearman correlations were used to analyze association between the variables, where r > 0.3 and p < 0.05 were considered significant.ResultsA total of 105 adult patients formed the inclusion criteria and were included for data analysis. Forty two out of the 105 patients were women. Sixty one (58%) of the 105 patients had acute symptomatic etiology while 17.1% patients were known epileptics; acute symptomatic etiology increased risk of mortality 5.28 times (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.44–19.35) (p = <0.01). Thirty eight (36.1%) patients progressed to refractory SE. The mortality in the entire cohort was 19%. Complications of prolonged mechanical ventilation and refractory status epilepticus showed strong and significant association with mortality (r > 0.300; p < 0.0001). Mortality was significantly higher in patients with acute symptomatic etiology and than other etiologies (85.0% vs 54.1%; p = 0.011).ConclusionAcute symptomatic etiology was the most common cause of SE in adults. While requirement for mechanical ventilation and refractory SE were the major factors associated with mortality, acute symptomatic etiology increased the risk of mortality in adult patients with SE.