Comparative study of efficacy of waking and sleep recordings following sleep deprivation as an activation method in the diagnosis of epilepsy.

In the present work, on the basis of an unselected collection of patients suspected of epilepsy, the diagnostic value of waking and sleep recordings each after 24 h sleep deprivation are compared with one another. Indicative findings of epilepsy were found in 16.7% of the cases in the waking EEG after sleep deprivation. In the sleep EEG after sleep deprivation this amounted to 57.1%. These figures speak for the advantage of the second method. The result is highly significant with a chi2 value of 13.01 (p less than 0.01).