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Introduction: Statistics suggest that a minimum of 4% of the general population experience one or more nonfebrile seizures in their lifetime. Continuous electroencephalography (cEEG) monitoring is an effective diagnostic tool for seizure detection. The present study aimed to investigate the EEG findings in the patients with the first seizure referring to the emergency department (ED). Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 80 patients with the first seizure admitted to the ED who were selected via convenience sampling. The inclusion criteria were age of more than 17 years, first seizure, and providing written informed consent to participate, and the exclusion criterion was the cases in which seizure was not confirmed by a neurologist. EEG was performed in the ED on the patients within 24 hours after the first attack, and the frequency of pathological changes in the EEG findings was determined. Data analysis was performed in SPSS using descriptive statistics (measures of central tendency and dispersion, frequency distribution) and inferential statistics. Results: In total, the sample population consisted of 35 male patients (43.8%) and 45 female patients (56.2%). The mean age of the patients was 52.54±19.33 years (median: 53 years). Among the patients, 46 cases (57.5%) had normal EEG findings, while 34 cases (42.5%) had abnormal (pathological) EEG findings. Conclusion: According to the results, 42.5% of the patients had abnormal EEG findings. However, accurate examinations in this regard may require other diagnostic tools along with EEG in order to confirm the diagnosis of epilepsy and seizure in these patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ketamine, among wide variety of sedative drugs, has shown beneficial effects when using during the procedural sedation, specifically in pediatrics. Various parameters should be considered in order to perform a safe and effective procedural sedation including optimum dosage of the sedative, administration methods of sedation, and need for applying any adjuvant drug. In this study, we aimed to review the studies, which have compared the efficacy of the different ways of the injection of ketamine such as intravenous or intramuscular ketamine application. Based on data obtained from the related articles, efficacy and safety of these two methods of ketamine usage in the pediatric procedural sedation were widely similar, but the intravenously administration of the ketamine can be proposed as the preferable mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]