Epilepsy is a condition of chronic disorder that can cause recurrent and unprovoked seizures. Seizures are sudden rush in electrical activity that occurs in the brain. Seizures are mainly of two types – generalized where the whole brain is affected and partial or focal where just a part of your brain gets affected.
Usually a mild seizure goes unnoticed and is difficult to identify. There is a lack of awareness for a few seconds that it lasts. With stronger seizures, spasms occur and muscle twitches which care uncontrollable, and could last between few seconds to minutes. This could follow with you having no memory of the event whatsoever.
Seizures could happen due to several reasons, like:
- Withdrawal from alcohol
- Very low levels of blood sugar
- High fever and head trauma
Epilepsy is a fairly common neurological disorder affecting almost 65 million population worldwide and 3 million in USA alone. Though any person from any background may contract this disorder, it is most common with young children and older people. There isn’t any cure so far for epilepsy, it could, however, be managed with certain medications and alternate therapies.
Symptoms
Partial seizures:
In case of simple seizure that is partial, the patient may not lose consciousness. Common symptoms include:
- Change in sense of touch, hear, taste, smell, and sight
- Dizziness accompanied with twitching and tingling of the limbs
Complex partial seizures:
This involves losing awareness or getting unconscious. There are other symptoms like staring blankly, being unresponsive, or even performing repetitive movements.
Generalized seizures:
This involves the entire brain and is of six types – absence seizures, tonic seizures, atonic seizures, clonic seizures, myoclonic seizures, and tonic-clonic seizures. Most of these conditions come with stiffening of the body, shaking, bladder or bowel control loss, biting of tongue, and loss of consciousness. After the seizure, you might not remember you had one, or may feel ill for some hours.
Causes
Six out 10 people suffering from this condition don’t know the cause behind it. Many things could lead to seizures, most possible causes could be:
- A traumatic injury in the brain
- Scar on the brain after an episode of brain injury
- Extremely high fever or some kind of illness
- Stroke – a leading precondition for epilepsy in individuals above 35 years of age
- Certain vascular disease
- Oxygen flow lacking in the brain
- A cyst or brain tumour
- Alzheimer’s disease or dementia
- Some paternal injury, lack of oxygen during birth, brain malformation, or infectious maternal use of drug
- Infectious diseases like meningitis or AIDS
- Developmental or genetic disorders or neurological malfunctions
In certain types of epilepsy, genetics and heredity plays a role. For the general mass, only a percent has chances of getting epilepsy before the age of 20 years. However, if this runs in the family, the risk factor increases to more than 2 to 5 percent. If this condition runs through heredity and some environmental factors trigger, people become more susceptible to epileptic seizures.
Diagnosis
See a doctor immediately if you get the slightest feel that you have had a seizure. This could be a warning of a serious medical condition. Along with your medical history and the symptoms, you doctor will decide what tests would be helpful. Your physician may probably conduct a neurological test to understand your mental functioning and motor abilities.
To diagnose epilepsy, the test would have to rule out other causes that bring about seizures. Your physician would in most instances order a total blood count along with blood chemistry. Through blood tests, your doctor may try identifying signs of any kinds of infectious diseases, kidney or liver function, level of blood sugar, etc. Common tests include CT scan MRI, position emission tomography (PET), single-photon emission computerized tomography and electroencephalogram (EEG).
Suresh Hospital’s Treatment
Sureshhas taken to mixing both traditional and the new method of treating its patients. Along with anticonvulsant, antiseizure drugs which are prescribed according to nature and severity of the condition, vagus nerve stimulators are also placed surgically under the skin on the patient’s chest to electrically stimulate nerves that runs through the neck. Ketogenic diet is generally advised for those who are in the primary stage, while brain surgery of the requirement for those with advanced stage of the medical condition.