I've had some experience with the QEEG in a clinical setting. Its interesting but I think the evidence of incremental validity is limited. I dont think it adds anything more, diagnostically or functionally speaking, to a good neuropsychological battery and history. At this point I'm not that impressed by the sensitivity/specificity for any condition.You can read stuff by Monastra, Lubar, Thatcher and you can make your own conclusions as far as that goes. Either way, I dont think it adds anything substantial to making impressions or to conceptualizing a case. An example of what it might look like in a report would be: "patient has a reduction of frontal beta activity, which can lead to/impact x,y,z symptoms (plug in whatever symptoms they present with). Clinical correlation is recommended." Which leads to my next issue...
The other issue for me is how it is used, and abused, by clinicians who make money off of it (all out of pocket for the patient) when there is not enough evidence for it to be used in a diagnostic way. Its kind of like a SPECT in the way that you can mess with the parameters and basically tell the patients whatever you want them to believe. Factoring out artifact is also a very tricky thing. If patients were aware of the limitations of the thing I doubt that they would pay a dime for it.
I think that at this point in time the QEEG is most useful in a more basic research setting, like in child development. There is also a more recent study on how changes seen by a QEEG might be able to predict successful patient responses to certain psychotropic meds. Maybe someday I'll change my mind if I can see some good research on it and see it used well in a clinical setting.
