PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Wei-Yuan Chuang
AU  - Yao-Tsung Chuang
AU  - Kwo-Chang Ueng
TI  - Fourteen-Year Follow-up in a Teenager with Congenital Long QT Syndrome Masquerading as Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy
AID  - 10.3122/jabfm.2009.03.080109
DP  - 2009 May 01
TA  - The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine
PG  - 331--334
VI  - 22
IP  - 3
4099  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/22/3/331.short
4100  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/22/3/331.full
SO  - J Am Board Fam Med2009 May 01; 22
AB  - Long QT syndrome is a potentially lethal cardiac channelopathy that can be mistaken for epilepsy in young people. We report a 17-year-old man who was initially treated as having both daytime and nocturnal idiopathic epilepsy for 5 years. A series of electrocardiograms showed the time of the convulsive episodes, and genetic testing lead to the final diagnosis. The combined use of a β-blocker and a pacemaker implant incompletely abolished the torsade de pointes. After an additional near-fatal event, a cardioverter defibrillator was implanted as final bridge therapy. An electrocardiogram with the correct calculation of the QT interval should be performed on all young people with a suggestive history; that is, treat refractory convulsive episodes specifically with nondiagnostic electroencephalograms.