The temporal epilepsy is generally associated to cardiac dysautonomia. Thus recognition of such syndrome in epileptic patients is a crucial step for offering the appropriate therapy. The aim of this study was to focused, on the one hand, on the determination of the orthostatic intolerance prevalence, especially the postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) in temporal epileptic patients compared to control group, and on the other hand, to evaluate the variation of heart rate (HR) from supine to standing position during orthostatic test for refractory and well-controlled temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).The Orthostatic test was performed on 30 TLE patients and 30 control subjects. Orthostatic heart rate (ortho HR) was recorded and compared to supine pre-orthostatic heart rate (preortho HR). To determine the prevalence of the POTS, three subgroups were admitted for the trial, as follow: Subgroup A (POTS): ortho HRpreortho HR ≥ 30 beat/min, Subgroup B (orthostatic tachycardia): 20 beat/min ≤ ortho HR-preortho HR< 30 beat/min and Subgroup C (normal): 10 beat/min ≤ ortho HR-preortho HR< 20 beat/min.
Our data have shown a significant enhanced occurrence of intolerance orthostatic that was 46.66 % in TLE versus 16.66 % in healthy subjects. The present study has brought evidence a higher POTS prevalence in TLE than in control subjects.
