Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) consist of paroxysmal changes in responsiveness, movements, or behaviour that superficially resemble epileptic seizures.

Presentation of a clinical case of a PNES in a patient with a diagnose of secondary epilepsy, illustrating the relevance of an adequate evaluation, differential diagnosis, and intervention.

Description of the clinical case, with brief literature review and discussion. A search was conducted on PubMed and other databases, using the MeSH terms “nonepileptic seizure”, and “epileptic seizure”.

We report the case of a 45-year-old female patient, brought to the emergency department because of tonic axial and limb nonsynchronous movements, closed eyes, long duration, with immediate awareness, no desaturation, tongue bite, facial flushing, dyspnoea or sphincter incontinency. She was medicated with clonazepam 1 mg and levetiracetam 1000 mg ev. TC-CE had no acute alteration. Bloodwork had no other major alteration except valproic acid below therapeutic levels (her usual medication, along with other antiepileptic drugs, antidepressant and antipsychotic). The antecedents of the patient: mild intellectual disability and an accidental traumatic brain injury in infancy, with secondary epilepsy. She was transferred to Psychiatry department. No electroencephalogram (EEG) was realized, because she had a recent one confirming PNES, and many other emergency observations with the diagnosis of PNES.

This clinical case showcases the diagnostic difficulties that clinicians face when there is an overlap in symptoms, emphasizing the need to combine patient history, witness reports, clinician observations, and ictal and interictal EEG to help distinguish these different clinical identities.

No significant relationships.

Ictal semiology interpretation for differentiating psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNESs) and epileptic seizures (ESs) is important for the institution of appropriate treatment. Our objective was to assess the ability of different health care professionals (HCPs) or students to distinguish PNES from ES based on video-recorded seizure semiology.

This study was designed following the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (STARD) guidelines. We showed in a random mix 36 videos of PNES or ES (18 each) and asked 558 participants to classify each seizure. The diagnostic accuracy of various groups of HCPs or students for PNES versus ES was assessed, as well as the effect of patient age and sex. Measures of diagnostic accuracy included sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve (AUC).

The descending order of diagnostic accuracy (AUC) was the following (p ≤ 0.001): (1) neurologists and epileptologists; (2) neurology residents; (3) other specialists and nurses with experience in epilepsy; and (4) undergraduate medical students. Although there was a strong trend toward statistical difference, with AUC 95% confidence intervals (CIs) that were not overlapping, between epileptologists (95% CI 93, 97) compared to neurologists (95% CI 88, 91), and neurologists compared to electroencephalography technicians (95% CI 82, 87), multiple pairwise comparisons with the conservative Tukey–Kramer honest significant difference test revealed no statistical difference (p = 0.25 and 0.1, respectively). Patient age and sex did not have an effect on diagnostic accuracy in neurology specialists.

Visual recognition of PNES by HCPs or students varies overall proportionately with the level of expertise in the field of neurology/epilepsy.