Effects of vagus nerve stimulation on heart rate variability in children with epilepsy.

CONCLUSION: The cardiovascular system is under deep sympathetic influence in children with epilepsy. Although VNS seems to provide a substantial improvement by achieving increased parasympathetic effects in short-term therapy, the levels were still lower than those of healthy children after either short- or long-term therapy. Therefore, impaired cardiovascular autonomic regulation may be associated with the epileptic process itself as well as with the contribution of some additional factors. Overall, different aspects such as age, epilepsy duration, epileptic focus, seizure frequency, and AEDs should also be considered for their further possible effects on HRV during VNS therapy.
PMID: 29462779 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Epilepsy and Behaviour - February 17, 2018 Category: Neurology Authors: Hirfanoglu T, Serdaroglu A, Cetin I, Kurt G, Capraz IY, Ekici F, Arhan E, Bilir E Tags: Epilepsy Behav Source Type: research