Early SEEG recruitment fraction correlated with heart-rate increase in 20 first seizures

In 20 patients with SEEG, the first seizure with both an included archived EKG heart-rate (HR) row and a recruitment summary was analyzed. HR change was the median in an ictal window minus the baseline median from −120 to −60 s. Recruitment fraction was the proportion of recorded bipolar pairs with line-length z-score >5 recruitment latency at or before 19 s. The HR increase from baseline to 30–60 s after onset correlated with recruitment fraction (Spearman ρ = 0.48, one-sided permutation p = 0.016, Holm-adjusted p = 0.031; bootstrap 95% CI −0.05 to 0.84). The increase at 0–30 s also correlated with recruitment fraction (ρ = 0.58, Holm-adjusted p = 0.013; 95% CI 0.20 to 0.82). Only two seizures without contralateral recruitment were available, so that comparison was not interpretable. Seizure duration did not correlate with the later HR increase (ρ = −0.05). These are correlations from a small sample with one seizure per patient and differing SEEG coverage; the fraction describes sampled pairs, not the fraction of the brain recruited. The primary analysis did not control for baseline HR.

seizure · heart rate · SEEG · recruitment · epilepsy · OpenNeuro · correlation