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
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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)
Nursing
There are different kinds of seizures, each having different effects. There is the generalized seizures which is a kind of seizure that affects the entire brain.There is the partial seizures which affects part of the brain. There is non-epileptic seizures, which is not really related to seizures, but it is caused by things,
A seizure is a disruption of the electrical activity between neurons in the brain. The resulting chemical changes can lead to a surge of electrical activity causing a seizure. Aside from trauma to the brain due to injury, or
Seizure is the physical finding that occurs after abnormal electrical activities in the brain. Patients with seizures could have symptoms like changes in one’s behavior, drooling, frothing at the mouth, irregular eye movement, grunting and snorting, incontinence, extreme changes in mood, shakes, sudden falls, abnormal changes in taste buds, clenching teeth, respiratory arrest, uncontrolled muscle spasms, twitching, and brief blackout follow by period of confusion where they don’t remember anything (Seizures: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia). Seizures also have many underlying etiology such as abnormal sodium or glucose levels in the blood, brain infections, brain injuries, brain tumor,
Seizures are described into two major groups of seizures: primary generalized seizures and partial seizures. The main difference between both of these seizures is how it begins. Partial seizures begin in one area of the brain and affect the part of the body being controlled by that area of that brain. Generalized seizures affect the whole area of the brain and occur at the same time. They begin and spread rapidly making it impossible to identify the origin.
A sudden attack of neurons is a complex neurological disorder, deemed the term seizure. A seizure is the physical findings or changes in behavior that occur after an episode of abnormal electrical brain activity.1 Epilepsy or seizure disorders affect about 1.8 percent of adults 18 years or older.2 Men present with their first seizure more often; 58%. Symptoms associated with seizures vary according to the brain region affected, and do not always indicate a seizure. Some symptoms involved are drooling, brief blackout, shaking of the entire body, and sudden falls.1 According to John Hopkins Medicine, there are generalized, absence, myoclonic, tonic-clonic, atonic, and partial seizures.3 Most times individuals with seizure activities
This paper is on epilepsy and seizures. The human brain is the source of all human epilepsy. (Steven C. Schachter, Patricia O. Shafer, Joseph I. Sirven, 2013) What is epilepsy? Epilepsy is sometimes referred to a seizure disorder, though not all seizures are related to epilepsy. According to the website Stony Brook Medicine, the reason a seizure occurs is because of an unexpected surge of electrical activity in the brain. (Stony Brook Medicine, 2014) Due to the overloading of electrical activity, it causes short-lived disturbance in the messaging system between the brain cells. The word epilepsy approaches from a Greek word 'epi' signifying 'upon or above' and the Greek word
A seizure is caused by a sudden burst of abnormal electrical and chemical activity in the brain. This activity temporarily interrupts normal brain function.
Before thorough medical research on epilepsy, it was thought to be a demonic entity causing the sudden movements. With scientific advancements, epilepsy can be characterized as a condition that affects the nervous system through a series of seizures. Within the brain presents abnormalities that cause convulsions throughout the body. Epilepsy can be broken down into two types and further specified by key symptoms the individual faces during an epileptic episode. There is no single cause for epilepsy; many factors such as genetics and traumatic injuries can trigger seizures, which can develop into a type of epilepsy syndrome. This condition cannot be cured, but can be treated through a series of medications after diagnosing the specific type of epilepsy. Individuals diagnosed with epilepsy will more than likely live with the condition throughout their entire life, leading them to change or add to their lifestyle to accommodate this condition. Charitable organization have benefited the epileptic community by raising awareness and conducting studies to find better treatments.
Thus, it seems that at any one time, approximately 50 million people in the world suffer from epilepsy. (3) Today, most would agree that epilepsy involves a deviation from normal brain activity through instability of neurons. The neurobiology of epilepsy is hard to describe, as different types of seizures are related to different parts and separate problems within the brain. This instability causes them to fire in a rapid and/or excessive, synchronous and/or inconsistent manner, with excess electrical discharges within our brain resulting in a seizure. Because this involves very complicated brain activity, and "instabilities" of varying degrees or locations in the brain, there is a great difference between the appearance and treatment of acute presentations, and more severe or chronic presentations. The severity of these seizures depends on several factors: if the episode is fever induced (febrile,) can be located to one area of the brain (partial seizures and temporal lobe seizures,) can be traced to places throughout the entire brain (generalized seizure,) or can be categorized by the intensity and level of electrical activity in the brain (petit mal seizures and grand mal seizures.) Unfortunately, although epilepsy's history dates back
People uneducated about Epilepsy may have confused thoughts on what it really is. People have these "notions," which are partly or entirely not true. So, throughout this research paper, these notions will be proven untrue, mostly by factual information given by
The type of seizure can depend on the portion of the brain where the misfiring neuron is present. For example, if only a specific area of the brain is involved, it is known as a partial seizure. This can result in:
Therefore, any abnormal electrical brain activity is considered a seizure. Now, let’s discuss what Epilepsy actually is. “Epilepsy is the name of a brain disorder characterized predominantly by recurrent and unpredictable interruptions of normal brain function, called epileptic seizures (Boas et al, 2005)”. In other words, epilepsy is more than one seizure due to abnormal electrical brain activity. There are several types of seizures that can occur that can be broken down into two different categories, focal seizures and generalized seizures. The difference between the two are the areas of the brain that are effected. During a focal seizure, only one part of the brain is affected. This can be further broken down into two categories, partial and complex. During a partial focal seizure, consciousness is not lost. Instead, it may alter how your senses interact with the environment. For
Epilepsy is a disorder where nerve cell activity in the brain becomes disturbed. This activity causes sporadic electrical “storms” in the brain called seizures. During seizures, people experience unusual behavior and symptoms. There are two major types of epilepsy, idiopathic/cryptogenic, symptomatic. Both of these have different causes and affect the body and mind in particular ways.
Epilepsy, also called seizure disorder, chronic brain disorder that briefly interrupts the normal electrical activity of the brain to cause seizures, characterized by a variety of symptoms including uncontrolled movements of the body, disorientation or confusion, sudden fear, or loss of consciousness. Epilepsy may result from a head injury, stroke, brain tumor, lead poisoning, genetic conditions, or severe infections like meningitis or encephalitis. In over 70 percent of cases no cause for epilepsy were identified. About 1 percent of the world population, or over 2 million people, are diagnosed with epilepsy.
Epilepsy can happen to anyone of any age. The largest(47%) percent of people, developing epilepsy for the first time, being children from birth to nine years of age. The next largest age group would be ten year olds to ninteen year olds at 30%. The least amount of first time seizures comes from the forty plus age group. (According to EFA publications) Over 2.5 million people suffer from epilepsy. The international league against epilepsy describes a seizure as an alternative term for "epileptic attack". Seizures vary in there length and severity. A "tonic-clonic" seizure can last for one to seven minutes. " Absence seizures usually last for a few seconds. However, complex partial seizure" may last for thirty seconds or two