Luis Pintor

Hospital Clínic de Barcelona · Servicio de Psiquiatría

Objective Psychogenic non‐epileptic seizures (PNES) mimic epileptic seizures without electroencephalographic correlation. Although classified as psychiatric disorders, their neurobiological or structural basis remains unclear. This study aimed to assess the prevalence and characteristics of MRI abnormalities in patients with PNES and those with com...

Objective The Epilepsy Self‐Stigma Scale (ESSS) has been developed in Japan for patients with epilepsy (PWE). We aimed to validate the scale in Spanish and examine its validity and reliability. Methods The transcultural adaptation of the ESSS was conducted using translation and back‐translation, along with pilot testing and an expert panel review....

This study examined the dynamic properties of brain regions involved in the genesis and spread of seizures in 10 individuals diagnosed with pharmacoresistant focal epilepsy. The patients and 30 healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans and the brain’s functional network dynamics were analyzed using the int...

Psychotic disorders are more frequent in people with epilepsy than the general population. They constitute one of the most serious psychiatric comorbidities which require an immediate psychopharmacologic intervention. Yet, access to psychiatrists is often limited or not available and the neurologists taking care of these patients are called-upon to...

Highlights •Depressive/anxious disorders and cognitive impairment are frequent comorbidities in epilepsy and have a more deleterious effect in DRE. •Studies concerning the relationship between anxiety and depression and cognitive performance in DRE are scarce. •Higher scores in HADS are associated with lower QOLIE-31 scores and might be considered...

Objective: Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) are common imitators of epileptic seizures. Refractoriness to antiseizure medication hinders the differential diagnosis between ES and PNES, carrying deleterious consequences in patients with PNES. Psychiatric and psychological characteristics may assist in the differential diagnosis between drug...

Objective: This study aims to assess the prevalence of Interictal Dysphoric Disorder (IDD) in drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) and to describe its clinical and psychopathological profile, including personality, as well as its impact on quality of life (QOL). Method: A retrospective cross-sectional study from an Epilepsy Unit from January 2007 to De...

Background and objectives: Delirium is the most prevalent psychiatric disorder in inpatient older people. Its presence is associated with higher rates of institutionalization, functional disability and mortality. This study aims to evaluate delirium in a hospitalized psychogeriatric population, focusing on which factors predict the appearance of de...

The seven-item Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale Depression subscale (HADS-D) and the total score of the 14-item HADS (HADS-T) are both used for major depression screening. Compared to the HADS-D, the HADS-T includes anxiety items and requires more time to complete. We compared the screening accuracy of the HADS-D and HADS-T for major depressio...

The seven-item Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale Depression subscale (HADS-D) and the total score of the 14-item HADS (HADS-T) are both used for major depression screening. Compared to the HADS-D, the HADS-T includes anxiety items and requires more time to complete. We compared the screening accuracy of the HADS-D and HADS-T for major depressio...

Several psychotropic drugs, including antidepressants (AD), mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics (AP) have been suggested to have favorable effects in the treatment of COVID-19. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to collect evidence from studies concerning the scientific evidence for the repurposing of psychotropic drugs in COV...

Background and purpose: fMRI is a noninvasive tool for predicting postsurgical deficits in candidates with pharmacoresistant temporal lobe epilepsy. We aimed to test an adapted paradigm of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test to evaluate differences in memory laterality indexes between patients and healthy controls and its association with neurop...

The objectives of this study are to determine the influence of personality profile in patients with drug‐resistant epilepsy on quality of life (QoL) after surgical treatment and compare the results with a non‐surgical control group at the 1‐year follow‐up. We conducted a prospective, comparative, controlled study, including 70 patients suffering fr...

Importance: Most evidence about efficacy and safety of antipsychotics in schizophrenia spectrum disorders relies on randomized clinical trials (RCTs). However, owing to their strict eligibility criteria, RCTs represent only a part of the real-world population (ie, unselected patients seen in everyday clinical practice), which may result in an effi...

A heart transplantation (HT) is performed when a patient’s heart health has been severely compromised. However, the health care needs of a patient throughout the transplantation process are also significant. In order to investigate these postoperative heart transplant challenges, this study has two objectives: to find which psychosocial and psychia...

Objective To determine changes in dimensions of personality in a sample of patients suffering from drug-resistant epilepsy at the 1-year follow-up following surgery, compared to non-surgically treated controls. Methods We conducted a prospective comparative controlled study, including drug-resistant epilepsy surgery candidates. Demographic, psychi...

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) can affect mental health in different ways. There is little research about psychiatric complications in hospitalized patients with COVID-19. The aim of the study was to describe the psychiatric clinical profile and pharmacological interactions in COVID-19 inpatients referred to a Consultation-Liaison Psychiat...

Background: Successful surgery depends on the accurate localization of epileptogenic zone before surgery. Ictal SPECT is the only imaging modality that allows identification of the ictal onset zone by measuring the regional cerebral blood flow at the time of injection. The main limitation of ictal SPECT in epilepsy is the complex methodology of th...

Purpose Psychiatric morbidity in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is frequent and negatively affects patients’ life quality. Surgery is the procedure of choice when treating seizures, although the effects on psychiatric disorders remain unclear. We evaluate the effect of surgery on psychiatric disorders in patients with TLE two years after the interven...

PURPOSE The use of invasive EEG (iEEG) recordings before epilepsy surgery has increased as more complex focal epilepsies are evaluated. Psychotic symptoms (PS) during iEEG have been scarcely reviewed. We aim to report our series of patients with psychotic symptoms (PS) brought about by cortical stimulation (CS) and to identify triggers. METHODS Re...

Background and objectives: There has been a recent increase in older patients admitted to general hospitals. A significant percentage of hospitalized older patients are ≥75 years old, which differ from the patients aged 65 to 74 years old in terms of functional status at patient discharge. This study aims to compare sociodemographic, clinical featu...

Background Successful surgery depends on the accurate localization of epileptogenic zone before surgery. Ictal SPECT is the only imaging modality that allows identification of the ictal onset zone by measuring the regional cerebral blood flow at the time of injection. The main limitations of ictal SPECT in epilepsy are the complex methodology of th...

Purpose We aimed to conduct a systematic review to evaluate the personality changes in adult patients with drug-resistant epilepsy following surgical treatment. Methods A systematic review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic Reviews and MetaAnalyses (PRISMA) statement. We searched PubMed, Medline databases, and the Coch...

Objectives Validated diagnostic interviews are required to classify depression status and estimate prevalence of disorder, but screening tools are often used instead. We used individual participant data meta-analysis to compare prevalence based on standard Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale – depression subscale (HADS-D) cutoffs of ≥8 and ≥11 v...

Background External trigeminal nerve stimulation (ETNS) is an emergent, non-invasive neurostimulation therapy delivered bilaterally with adhesive skin electrodes. In previous studies, ETNS was associated to a decrease in seizure frequency in patients with focal drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE). Objective To determine the long-term efficacy and tolera...

Aim: To review psychological and clinical outcomes in long term follow up studies after heart transplantation. To assess psychiatric and psychosocial features in a sample of heart transplant patients followed between 5 to 10 years after transplant surgery by the Consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP) team in a general hospital. Methods: Basal asses...

Background and objectives Cognitive deficits and psychiatric comorbidities are frequent complications of epilepsy. These deleterious effects are thought to be present to a greater extent in drug-resistant epilepsy. A significant association between cognition, psychopathology and drug-resistant epilepsy is expected to exist. The objective of this re...

Focal epilepsy can be conceptualized as a network disorder, and the functional epileptic network can be described as a complex system of multiple brain areas that interact dynamically to generate epileptic activity. However, we still do not fully understand the functional architecture of epileptic networks. We studied a cohort of 21 patients with e...

Objective: Two previous individual participant data meta-analyses (IPDMAs) found that different diagnostic interviews classify different proportions of people as having major depression overall or by symptom levels. We compared the odds of major depression classification across diagnostic interviews among studies that administered the Depression s...

Background: Interictal Dysphoric Disorder (IDD) was described by Blumer as a pleomorphic affective disorder that appears in epilepsy and is characterized by labile depressive symptoms (depressive mood, anergia, pain, insomnia), labile affective symptoms (fear, anxiety), and the specific symptoms euphoria and paroxysmal irritability. Despite the hi...

Introduction: Delirium is a neurobehavioral syndrome caused by the transient disruption of normal neuronal activity secondary to systemic disturbances. It is the most common neuropsychiatric syndrome found in the general hospital setting and one of the main reasons for referral to consultation-liaison psychiatry departments. Despite the wide use of...

INTRODUCTION: Delirium is a neurobehavioral syndrome caused by the transient disruption of normal neuronal activity secondary to systemic disturbances. It is the most common neuropsychiatric syndrome found in the general hospital setting and one of the main reasons for referral to consultation-liaison psychiatry departments. Despite the wide use of...

Background: Psychosocial risk factors influence the course of transplantation. Psychosocial evaluation is an important part of pre-transplantation evaluation processes, yet there are no standardised instruments in Spanish. Objective: To translate, adapt, and test the reliability of the Stanford Integrated Psychosocial Assessment for Transplantat...

Introduction: The clinical management of patients with psychotic disorders (PDs) can be particularly complex if it takes place in the context of consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP) services within a general hospital. However, there are few studies specifically investigating the acute treatment procedures for these patients in CLP settings. Object...

Introducción: El manejo clínico de los pacientes con trastornos psicóticos (TPs) es particularmente complejo si se lleva a cabo en el contexto de los servicios de psiquiatría de enlace e interconsulta (PEI) de un hospital general. Sin embargo, disponemos de pocos estudios que hayan investigado de forma específica los procedimientos asistenciales de...

AIM: To compare a sample of patients with substance use disorder (SUD) and another with “no psychiatric diagnosis” (NPD), referred to a Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (CLP) Unit. METHODS: Two samples were compared, throughout a comparative study assessing 2105 inpatient adults with SUD (DSM-V criteria) and 895 with NPD, admitted to non-psychiatri...

AIM: To compare a sample of patients with substance use disorder (SUD) and another with “no psychiatric diagnosis” (NPD), referred to a Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (CLP) Unit. METHODS: Two samples were compared, throughout a comparative study assessing 2105 inpatient adults with SUD (DSM-V criteria) and 895 with NPD, admitted to non-psychiatri...

INTRODUCTION: Major Depressive Disorders (MDD) are overrepresented among patients admitted to nonpsychiatric units of general hospitals (Rentsch et al., 2007). Although it is associated with increased healthcare costs, longer hospital stays and higher functional disability (Egede, 2007), the majority of depressed patients are not identified in this...

Objective: To perform an exploratory analysis to investigate the relationship between the Big Five factors of personality and long-term survival in heart transplantation (HT) recipients. Method: We performed a prospective study that included consecutive adult candidates who underwent HT between 2006 and 2012. HT recipients were followed-up until a...

INTRODUCTION: Adjustment disorder (AD) is among the most frequently diagnosed mental disorders in clinical practice although it has received little attention from the research community. Its psychobiology is unclear and there is a low level of evidence about the effectiveness of the psychopharmacological treatment recommendations. AD has a high pre...

INTRODUCTION: Psychiatric disorders in hospitalized elderly patients currently reach rates of 50-60%, depressive episodes and organic mental disorders such as delirium and dementia being the most frequent diagnoses. These disorders increase the risk for morbidity and mortality, as well as prolong the length of hospital stays. For this reason, an ap...

BACKGROUND: Genetic counselling has recently emerged as a procedure to help people to manage their life expectancy related with early-onset dementia (Molinuevo, 2005). However it can produce uncertainties and difficulties. This study has been designed to know how people involved in a genetic counselling procedure cope with it. METHODS: It is a cro...

INTRODUCTION: Adjustment disorder (AD) is among the most frequently diagnosed mental disorders in clinical practice although it has received little attention from the research community. Its psychobiology is unclear and there is a low level of evidence about the effectiveness of the psychopharmacological treatment recommendations. AD has a high pre...

INTRODUCTION: Psychiatric disorders in hospitalized elderly patients currently reach rates of 50-60%, depressive episodes and organic mental disorders such as delirium and dementia being the most frequent diagnoses. These disorders increase the risk for morbidity and mortality, as well as prolong the length of hospital stays. For this reason, an ap...

Introduction Drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) is defined as failure of adequate trials of two tolerated and appropriately chosen antiepileptic drug schedules to achieve sustained seizure freedom and affects approximately 30% of patients with epilepsy. Treatment of DRE is complex as it must not only focus on achieving seizure-freedom, but also on the m...

Z-scores in neuropsychological tasks in the total sample (mean ± SD) and groups with typical and atypical hemispheric asymmetry.

Chronic exposure to seizures in patients with left hemisphere (LH) epileptic focus could favor higher activation in the contralateral hemisphere during language processing, but the cognitive effects of this remain unclear. This study assesses the relationship between asymmetry in hemispheric activation during language fMRI and performance in verbal...

Objective: To examine the clinical features and the psychiatric interventions in a sample of patients with adjustment disorder (AD) that received consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP) services in a general hospital over a 10-year-period. Method: Descriptive longitudinal study using a standardized computerized clinical database. We assessed adult i...

El delirium es un síndrome neuropsiquiátrico de especial relevancia en el paciente adulto mayor, tanto por su prevalencia como por sus implicaciones clínicas. Diversos estudios han demostrado que el delirium se asocia a un incremento de la morbilidad y la mortalidad, produciendo una prolongación de las estancias hospitalarias y un mayor deterioro f...

Psychiatric morbidity in drug-resistant epilepsy is frequent. Surgery is the best therapeutic alternative for treating seizures, but the current evidence concerning the effects of surgery on psychiatric disorders (PDs) is inconclusive. We aim to clarify surgery's role in long-term PDs. Using a prospective controlled study, we analyzed the psychopat...

Objective To describe an adult patient with Rasmussen’s disease with focal dystonia as the most disabling symptom and the good response to unilateral globus pallidus internus (GPi) deep brain stimulation (DBS). Methods Retrospective review of clinical records and diagnostic tests. Results The patient had displayedmild focal seizures with sensory...

AIM: To examine the psychiatric interventions and the clinical features of a sample of patients with adjustment disorder (AD) receiving Consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP) service in a general hospital over a 10-year-period. METHODS: Longitudinal descriptive study assessing 1,569 adult inpatients with AD (DSM-IV-TR criteria) admitted to non-psyc...

AIM: To examine the psychiatric interventions and the clinical features of a sample of patients with adjustment disorder (AD) receiving Consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP) service in a general hospital over a 10-year-period. METHODS: Longitudinal descriptive study assessing 1,569 adult inpatients with AD (DSM-IV-TR criteria) admitted to non-psyc...

Aims: To describe the prevalence of psychotic events of a sample of patients with DRE included during a 9-year-period in a clinical protocol for assessment of candidates for neurosurgical treatment. As a secondary objective, we investigated a possible relationship between the localization of the epileptogenic zone (EZ) (temporal versus extratempora...

Objetivo. Existen diversas investigaciones previas que han descrito las características de distintos servicios hospitalarios de Psiquiatría de Enlace e Interconsulta (PEI) a lo largo de un periodo de tiempo de uno o más años. El propósito del presente artículo es el de examinar las características de una muestra amplia de pacientes remitidos a un s...

Objective. Previous research has described the characteristics of Consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP) services over one or more years. The aim of this paper was to examine the patterns of a large sample of patients receiving CLP service over a 10-year-period (2005-2014) and to determine the possible changes over time of the clinical practice. The...

Pese a que el manejo no farmacológico de los síntomas del delirium es fundamental, la mayoría de pacientes también requiere un abordaje psicofarmacológico. El objetivo principal de esta comunicación es describir el perfil de tratamiento psicofarmacológico de una muestra de pacientes con delirium, derivados al servicio de psiquiatría de enlace de un...

Consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP) refers to the skills and knowledge utilized in evaluating and treating the emotional and behavioural conditions in patients who are referred from medical and surgical settings. There are few studies specifically investigating the acute treatment procedures of patients with schizophrenia in the context of CLP. O...

Background There are few studies specifically investigating the acute treatment procedures of patients with schizophrenia in the context of Consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP). Purpose Describe the main clinical features of the referrals of patients with schizophrenia, attended by a general hospital CLP service. Methods Longitudinal observation...

Introduction Psychiatric morbidity in refractory epilepsy is frequent and has a negative influence on quality of life. Treatment-refractory epileptic patients are at higher risk of developing psychiatric disturbances. The interictal dysphoric disorder (IDD) has been described as a pleomorphic pattern of symptoms claimed to be typical of patients wi...

Introduction Psychiatric morbidity in epilepsy is high, with prevalence rates of up to 50%, being higher in treatment-refractory cases. This co-morbidity worsen the quality of life. Psychiatric co-morbidities are hampered by atypical presentations or disorders, which do not appear in the DSM-IV or ICD. Objectives To describe the psychiatric morbid...

We assessed the outcome of patients with drug resistant epilepsy and neuronal antibodies who underwent epilepsy surgery. Retrospective study, information collected with a questionnaire sent to epilepsy surgery centers. Thirteen patients identified, with antibodies to GAD (8), Ma2 (2), Hu (1), LGI1 (1) or CASPR2 (1). Mean age at seizure onset: 23 ye...

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion weight imaging became a conventional tool to study brain connectivity in healthy and diseased individuals. However, both techniques provide indirect measures of brain connectivity leading to controversies on their interpretation. Among these controversies, interpretation of anti-corr...

INTRODUCTION: Delirium is a syndrome of neuropsychiatric signs and symptoms that can accompany virtually any serious medical condition. It is characterized by a disturbance of attention and awareness, as well as variety of other aspects of cognition that develops over a short period of time in response to another medical condition. The development...

The main objective of this study is to describe the psychopharmacological treatment profile of a sample of inpatients with delirium, referred to the consultation-liaison psychiatry service of the University Clinical Hospital of Barcelona.

Objective: Psychiatric morbidity in drug-resistant epilepsy is frequent and has a negative influence on quality of life. Surgery is proven to be the best therapeutic alternative for treating seizures. However, it is inconclusive with the current evidence whether surgery, per se, is a risk factor or promotes amelioration of psychiatric disorders. U...

BACKGROUND: Consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP) refers to the skills and knowledge utilized in evaluating and treating the emotional and behavioural conditions in patients who are referred from medical and surgical settings. There are few studies specifically investigating the acute treatment procedures of bipolar patients in the context of CLP....

There are few studies specifically investigating the acute treatment procedures of bipolar disorder (BD) patients in the context of consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP). The purpose of this study is to describe the main clinical features of referrals of a sample of patients with BD (DSM-IV-TR criteria) attended within a general hospital CLP servi...

Objective: Neuroimaging is crucial in the presurgical evaluation of patients with medically refractory epilepsy. To improve the moderate sensitivity of [(18) F]fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography ((18) F-FDG-PET), our aim was to evaluate the usefulness of statistical parametric mapping (SPM) to localize the seizure-onset zone (SOZ) in...

Single-subject voxel-based analysis: DTI data.

Single-subject voxel-based analysis: 18F-FDG-PET data (p < 0.001, uncorrected).

Group voxel-based analysis.

Objectives Several studies using ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (¹⁸F-FDG-PET) or diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) have found both temporal and extratemporal abnormalities in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy with ipsilateral hippocampal sclerosis (MTLE-HS), but data are lacking about the findings of both techniques in t...

Pese a la elevada prevalencia de alteraciones psicopatológicas y de trastornos psiquiátricos durante todo el proceso de trasplante cardiaco, todavía sigue siendo un campo poco estudiado.

Background Lamotrigine is widely used to prevent bipolar depression. Drug Reaction with Eosinophilia and Systemic Symptoms (DRESS) is a rare, potentially life-threatening adverse effect. The long latency between drug exposure and disease onset, added to the high variability of its clinical presentation, can increase the risk of misdiagnosis lamotri...