ES/PNES differential diagnosis after a brief training of naive researchers using a linguistic Scoring Table

Abstract

We asked a group of four researchers without experience in the field, to fill in the simplified Scoring Table based on Conversational Analysis principles. Researchers underwent a single-day training based on the linguistic differences in the event description by patients with epileptic seizures (ES) and psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES). Two raters reached 100% agreement with the gold standard and even in the worst case the error was only 25%. This tool could be used for first screening, because it is very easy to administer, both for the interview and for the Scoring Table completion, confirming the usefulness of Conversation Analysis in differential diagnosis between ES and PNES.

Keywords: Differential diagnosis; Functional seizures; Linguistics; Scoring Table.