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Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Purpose: External trigeminal nerve stimulation is an emerging noninvasive therapy for drug resistant epilepsy (DRE). The aim of this study is to describe the long-term outcome of a series of patients treated with eTNS., Methods: We present a retrospective observational study of patients with DRE who received eTNS treatment, comparing the monthly seizure frequency during the 3-months period before eTNS initiation with the monthly seizure frequency at 6, 12, 24, 36 and 48 months after eTNS. We analyze the responder rate, the retention rate and the tolerability., Results: 17 patients with highly drug-resistant epilepsy were included. Mean follow-up was 2194 [6-56] months. The responder rate was 35% at 6 months and 12 months, 23% at 24 months, 19% at 36 months, and 14% at 48 months. Retention rates at the same periods were 88%, 53%, 41%, 37.5% and 28.5%. There were no reports of serious adverse events. Four patients reported improvement in sleep and better mood., Conclusion: The effectivity of eTNS is similar to some of the new treatments available, with a retention rate of 52% in the first year and 285% at 4 years. Tolerability is excellent with only mild effects reported by a minority of patients., (Copyright © 2019 British Epilepsy Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To evaluate an automated seizure detection (ASD) algorithm in EEGs with periodic and other challenging patterns., Methods: Selected EEGs recorded in patients over 1year old were classified into four groups: A. Periodic lateralized epileptiform discharges (PLEDs) with intermixed electrical seizures. B. PLEDs without seizures. C. Electrical seizures and no PLEDs. D. No PLEDs or seizures. Recordings were analyzed by the Persyst P12 software, and compared to the raw EEG, interpreted by two experienced neurophysiologists; Positive percent agreement (PPA) and false-positive rates/hour (FPR) were calculated., Results: We assessed 98 recordings (Group A=21 patients; B=29, C=17, D=31). Total duration was 82.7h (median: 1h); containing 268 seizures. The software detected 204 (=76.1%) seizures; all ictal events were captured in 29/38 (76.3%) patients; in only in 3 (7.7%) no seizures were detected. Median PPA was 100% (range 0-100; interquartile range 50-100), and the median FPR 0/h (range 0-75.8; interquartile range 0-4.5); however, lower performances were seen in the groups containing periodic discharges., Conclusion: This analysis provides data regarding the yield of the ASD in a particularly difficult subset of EEG recordings, showing that periodic discharges may bias the results., Significance: Ongoing refinements in this technique might enhance its utility and lead to a more extensive application., (Copyright © 2014 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)