Reasons for prolonged length of stay in the epilepsy monitoring unit

- Prolonged length of stay (LOS) >7 days occurred in 38.8% of our EMU admissions.
- LOS was significantly longer for patients with epileptic versus non-epileptic seizures.
- LOS was longer for patients with more prolonged durations of epilepsy/spells.
- A third of prolonged admissions were secondary to prolonged time to first seizure.
- Other reasons included seizure clusters (6.9%) and status epilepticus (1.6%).

Epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) admissions are essential for the classification/localization of epileptic seizures (ES) and psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES). However, the duration of admissions is highly variable. Accordingly, we evaluated the duration of 596 EMU admissions and reasons for prolonged (>7 days) lengths of stay (LOS). The average LOS was longer for patients diagnosed with ES (8.0 days, SD 4.1 days) than all others (6.0 days, SD 3.9 days, p < 0.001). Of the 596 admissions, 231 (38.8%) had prolonged LOS. The most commonly reported reason for prolonged stay was need to record additional seizures (33%). Other contributors included complications such as seizure clusters (6.9%), status epilepticus (1.6%), test complications (3.7%), psychiatric concerns (4.3%), and medication side effects (1.6%). Our results suggest multiple factors produce prolonged LOS with no factor accounting for the majority. Recording an insufficient number of all habitual seizures was the leading cause, which was over twice the percentage of reported complications (17.6%). However, being able to prolong admissions when necessary resulted in only 14.9% of admissions being inconclusive, potentially justifying the extra expense. Efforts to shorten LOS may be best directed at faster recording of seizures, but this may increase LOS due to complications. Our results may be helpful when assessing whether efforts to shorten LOS are useful in improving the quality and cost of care.