Pediatric Seizures: What You Need to Know

The condition in which a child or adult has seizures is known as epilepsy. It afflicts 470, 000 children in the United States and is the fourth most common brain condition. In fact, most adults who have it get diagnosed during childhood, with the first symptoms occurring during the first year of their life.

Despite being a common illness, most parents may not know when their child is having a seizure, so it is important to know everything about them to seek timely pediatric services.

What are Seizures?

Your brain is chock-full of nerve cells that communicate with each other via electrical impulses. Simply put, anything that disrupts this communication may cause an overload of electric charge, which manifests as a seizure.

What prompts this abnormality is unknown. However, if it occurs twice a day, your child’s pediatric specialist may give them a formal epilepsy diagnosis.

Signs to Watch Out For

While specific symptoms largely depend on the type of seizures, here are the most common ones:

· Nausea

· Loss of consciousness and subsequent collapse

· Staring

· Jerking

· Muscle spasms

· Lack of response to conversation or noise and vigorous nodding

· Loss of bowel or bladder control during or after the seizure

· Change or loss of sight

· Lip-smacking

· Deja vu

· Shaking of the extremities

Types of Seizures

There are two categories of epileptic seizures, namely:

1. Focal

Also known as partial seizures, they affect part of the brain, and range from simple to complex; conscious in the former, not so much in the latter.

These seizures usually signal their arrival with an aura: loss of vision, hearing, or smell; feelings of fear, euphoria, or déjà vu; nausea or sweating.

2. Generalized

This type affects both parts of the brain and has four types:

· Absence seizure

· Atonic seizure

· Generalized tonic-clonic seizure

· Myoclonic seizure

It causes a complete loss of consciousness, bowel or bladder movements, post-seizure fatigue, loss of memory, and lack of awareness. Depending on the type, these seizures may occur rarely or more frequently.

Diagnosing Seizures

Since seizures can be caused by abnormal nerve impulses or due to a stroke, tumor, or brain damage, the pediatric specialist will inquire about your child’s medical and recent history for any red flags. They will then proceed to use the following methods for a diagnosis:

· An MRI or CAT scan.

· Blood test for any underlying conditions.

· Neurological exam

· Electroencephalogram (EEG) to check recent brain activity.

Pediatric Services in Sacramento

The treatment options for pediatric epilepsy are several. A family medical clinic with pediatric specialists like those at Natomas Family Practice can properly determine whether your child needs medicine, nutritional counseling, or both to live everyday life.

Physicians Dr. Lau and Dr. Hwang and their staff have years of experience in regulating normal brain patterns in children because they understand that cases vary on an individual level.

Learn more about their medical service to the community by calling the clinic at 916-928-0856 or leave a message online.