Current clinical magnetoencephalography practice across Europe: are we closer to use MEG as an established clinical tool?

Xavier de Tiège, Daniel Lundqvist, Sándor Beniczky, Stefano Seri, Ritva Paetau

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Purpose: This comprehensive survey aims at characterizing the current clinical use of magnetoencephalography (MEG) across European MEG centres.
Methods: Forty-four MEG centres across Europe were contacted in May 2015 via personalized e-mail to contribute to survey. The web-based survey was available on-line for 1 month and the MEG centres that did not respond were further contacted to maximize participation.
Results: Among the 57% of responders, 12 centres from 10 different countries reported to use MEG for clinical applications. A total of 524 MEG investigations were performed in 2014 for the pre-surgical evaluation of epilepsy, while in the same period 244 MEG investigations were performed for pre-surgical functional brain mapping. Seven MEG centres located in different European countries performed ≥50 MEG investigations for epilepsy mapping in 2014, both in children and adults. In those centres, time from patient preparation to MEG data reporting tends to be lower than those investigating a lower annual number of patients.
Conclusion: This survey demonstrates that there is in Europe an increasing and widespread expertise in the field of clinical MEG. These findings should serve as a basis to harmonize clinical MEG procedures and promote the clinical added value of MEG across Europe. MEG should now be considered in Europe as a mature clinical neurophysiological technique that should be used routinely in two specific clinical indications, i.e, the pre-surgical evaluation of refractory focal epilepsy and functional brain mapping.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)53-59
Number of pages7
JournalSeizure
Volume50
Early online date8 Jun 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2017

Bibliographical note

© 2017, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Keywords

  • magnetoencephalography
  • Europe
  • survey
  • epilepsy
  • pre-surgical evaluation
  • functional mapping

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Current clinical magnetoencephalography practice across Europe: are we closer to use MEG as an established clinical tool?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this