Volume 8, Number 6—June 2002
Research
Neurocysticercosis in Radiographically Imaged Seizure Patients in U.S. Emergency Departments1
, David A. Talan*, Gregory J. Moran*, William R. Mower*, Michael Newdow*, Victor C.W. Tsang†, Robert W. Pinner†, and the EMERGEncy ID NET Study Group2
Table 2
Emergency department physicians’ diagnoses for 1,348a neuroimaged seizure patients
| Diagnosis | Seizure patients (%) |
|---|---|
| Etiology uncertain | 515 (38) |
| Alcohol or drug abuse/withdrawal | 253 (19) |
| Head injury | 105 (7.8) |
| Epilepsy | 92 (6.8) |
| Otherb | 104 (7.7) |
| Brain tumor | 42 (3.1) |
| Metabolic disorder (e.g., hypoglycemia) | 39 (2.9) |
| Stroke | 36 (2.7) |
| Neurocysticercosis | 30 (2.2) |
| Nontraumatic cerebral hemorrhage | 22 (1.6) |
| Syncope, possibly not seizure | 25 (1.9) |
| Meningitis or brain abscess | 18 (1.3) |
| Pseudoseizure | 14 (1.0) |
| Toxoplasmosis | 12 (0.9) |
| No diagnosis documented | 42 (3.1) |
aThe method of categorizing discharge diagnoses was modified during the study. These data represent the last 1,348 of 1,833 patient encounters.
bOther category includes six patients with recent neurosurgery, three with toxic levels of anticonvulsant medications, three with reactions to non-anticonvulsant medication, three with systemic lupus erythematosus, and several other less frequently occurring causes.
1 Presented at the 1997 annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. Washington, DC, May, 1997.
2 The following investigators and centers collaborated in the EMERGEncy ID NET Study Group: Principal investigator, D. Talan; Coinvestigator, G. Moran; Director of Informatics and Biostatistics, W. Mower; Project Coordinator, M. Newdow; Assistant Director of Informatics, S. Ong; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collaborators, R. Pinner, V.C.W. Tsang, and L. Conn; Executive Committee, D. Talan, G. Moran, C. Pollack, J. Jui, L. Slutsker, R. Pinner; Site Investigators, P. Cheney (University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque, NM), W. Chiang (Bellevue Hospital Center, New York, NY); L. Dunbar (Louisiana State University Health Science Center, New Orleans, LA), K. Heilpern (Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA), J. Jui (Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, OR), D. Karras (Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA), G. Moran (Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, Sylmar, CA), C. Pollack (Maricopa Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ), J. O’Brien (Orlando Regional Medical Center, Orlando, FL), J. Runge (Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte, NC), and M. Steele (University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, MO).