In this interview, Dr. Andrew N. Wilner, MD, interviews Dr. Joseph F. Drazkowski, MD who is involved with the American Academy of Neurology developing courses for neurologists, for increasing proficiency in EEG and EEG video.
Andrew N. Wilner, MD: This is Dr Andrew Wilner, reporting for Medscape. I am here in Phoenix interviewing Dr Joseph Drazkowski, a professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic. At the most recent American Academy of Neurology meeting, he was a course director and participated in another course, both of which were designed to improve the skills of neurologists with EEG and EEG video.
Joe, tell me why are you doing these courses? What’s the need?
Joseph F. Drazkowski, MD: I think there’s an important need for general neurologists to work through the patients who have spells of undetermined etiology. There are consequences to making the right diagnosis, and consequences to missing the diagnosis. It’s very important.
The rate of proper diagnosis on this ranges from around 75% to 80%, so it’s graded a C or a B, depending on how you look at it. What you really need is to get the diagnosis up a little bit higher. You need to make an accurate diagnosis for proper therapy.
Dr Wilner: Doesn’t everybody just have epilepsy or…?
Dr Drazkowski: The answer is no. There’s a fantastic book I would recommend from a few years ago, called Imitators of Epilepsy. Bob Fisher, one of my mentors, wrote this, and we use it to this very day. It’s kind of a model for how we look at things.
There are transient neurologic events that could be all kinds of different things. We use the courses to highlight those. We take prime examples of things that we see that are a little odd, a little different, to remind people it’s more than just epilepsy that we deal with.
Continue reading interview here: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/865088
