부산대학교 도서관

Objective: Epilepsy is a neurological disease affecting more than 50 million people worldwide. Antiepileptic drugs are the first-line treatment for epilepsy. However, seizures persist in approximately one third of patients despite appropriate treatment and patient compliance. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a neuromodulation method that can be used in research to suppress epileptic seizures. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effect of cathodal tDCS on seizure frequency in patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy. The preliminary findings of our study are presented below. Methods: Our study is a randomized, double-blind, parallelcontrolled clinical trial. We enrolled 10 adult patients with drug-resistant epilepsy (7active/3sham). Cathodal tDCS was applied at a current of 2mA for 30 minutes for 5 consecutive days on the epileptic focus location determined by EEG, MRI, and clinical correlation. The anode electrode was placed on the contralateral deltoid muscle. Patients or their caregivers were asked to keep a seizure diary for one month before and 3 months after tDCS application. In this presentation, we evaluated the results for the first month. Baseline seizure frequencies between the active and sham groups were compared using an independent sample t-test. Then, the data of the patients who completed the first month were evaluated using a repeated measures analysis of variance test. Results: In the statistical analyses, there was no difference between the groups in baseline seizure frequencies. For both the active group (n=7) and the sham group (n=3), there were no significant differences in seizure frequencies before and one month after the tDCS. Conclusion: Patient recruitment and monthly seizure followup are ongoing. More reliable results will be obtained as the number of patients in the groups increases. Since the number of patients in the groups is low, it is predicted that the statistical results we obtained supposed to change as the study continues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]