[Acute language disorder in elderly patients: ischemic or epileptic origin?].

Acute language disorder is highly suggestive of cerebrovascular disease, but when accompanied by behavioral disturbance, particularly in elderly patients, it may express a different etiology. Six women aged 71 to 84 years presented with a mild behavioral disturbance followed by a language disorder that included fluent dysphasia, paraphasia, dysnomia, perseveration, and impaired understanding of complex orders. They fully recovered within 24 h. MR-imaging, including diffusion-weighted sequences in five of them, showed no acute lesions. EEG showed epileptogenic waveforms in three cases and slow waves in the other three, in a location that included the left temporal region. These findings disappeared in subsequent controls. All of these tests were performed during the acute episode or up to 72 h after onset. No patient has presented a new episode so far. The high sensitivity of new neuroimaging techniques forces the search for non-vascular etiologies in those patients in which no structural lesions that could account for the symptoms can be demonstrated. EEG can be useful in the diagnosis of some of these stroke mimics. Acute language disorders accompanied by disturbed behavior in the elderly may reflect a partial seizure of the temporal lobe.