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Epilepsy in Children Essay

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Epilepsy in Children

Epilepsy is the name for a condition of recurrent seizures where no underlying cause can be determined. Seizures occur as a result of abrupt, explosive, unorganized discharges of cerebral neurons. This causes a sudden alteration in brain function involving sensory, motor, autonomic and/or psychic clinical manifestations.
Epilepsy can be a result of other conditions including:
§ Genetic predisposition
§ Brain tumor
§ Injury, trauma
§ Infection
§ Fever
§ Alcohol or drug use …show more content…

These seizures often lead to a all possibly causing injury to the child.
Partial seizures are also sometimes called local or focal seizures. They take place in one hemisphere of the brain. There are two subcategories of partial seizures including simple partial and complex partial.
Simple partial: seizures do not cause a loss of consciousness. During a simple partial seizure the person will experience motor, sensory or autonomic symptoms such as abdominal discomfort, strange tastes in their mouth, and an increase in heart rate.
Complex partial: often cause the patient to loose consciousness for one to three minutes. During this time symptoms such as lip smacking, hallucinations, chewing or teeth grinding will occur. A period of confusion will also follow this type of seizure.
Unclassified seizures are seizures with no apparent cause and do not fall into the generalized or partial categories. Unclassified seizures account for about half of all seizure activity. (Ignataicius, 950; JAD, 971; Benbadis,1)
Treatment for epilepsy is often focused on controlling the seizures with the least amount of medication as possible. Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) are the class used to accomplish this. Some of the AEDs that are used most often are Clonazepam, Diazepam, Divalproex, Gabapentin, and Phenytoin. The most common side effects of these medications include nausea, vomiting, sedation, fatigue, and lethargy. (Kwan,1; Benbadis, 3-5; Huethers,637)
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