What are the causes of seizures in children? How are seizures diagnosed in children? What are the signs and symptoms of seizures in children? What are the treatments for seizures in children?.

Understanding Seizures in Children

A seizure occurs when a large number of nerve cells in the brain send out an abnormal and intense wave of electrical activity, overwhelming the brain and resulting in various symptoms such as muscle spasms, loss of consciousness, or strange behavior. Seizures can have various causes, including fever, lack of oxygen, head trauma, or illness.

Identifying the Causes of Seizures in Children

In most cases, the cause of seizures in children cannot be identified, a condition known as “idiopathic” or “cryptogenic” seizures. However, genetic research is helping experts better understand the underlying causes of different types of seizures, which may eventually lead to more targeted treatments.

Diagnosing Seizures in Children

Diagnosing a seizure can be challenging, as they often happen quickly and the doctor may not witness the event. The doctor will need to rule out other conditions that can resemble seizures, such as nonepileptic seizures caused by factors like changes in blood sugar or heart rhythm. The doctor may order various tests, including an EEG to check the brain’s electrical activity or an MRI to scan the brain.

Recognizing the Signs and Symptoms of Seizures in Children

Seizures can manifest in different ways, from sudden muscle spasms and loss of consciousness to more subtle signs like staring spells or inappropriate behavior. It’s important for parents and caregivers to be aware of these various seizure symptoms and report them to the child’s doctor.

Treating Seizures in Children

The treatment for seizures in children typically involves medication, such as anticonvulsant drugs, to control the abnormal electrical activity in the brain. In some cases, other treatments like dietary changes or surgery may be recommended. The goal of treatment is to reduce the frequency and severity of seizures and minimize their impact on the child’s development and quality of life.

Preventing and Managing Seizures in Children

While the underlying causes of seizures in children are often not fully understood, there are steps parents and caregivers can take to help prevent and manage seizures. This includes identifying and avoiding potential triggers, ensuring the child gets enough sleep, and closely monitoring the child’s condition and any changes in behavior or symptoms.

The Importance of Early Intervention and Ongoing Care

Early diagnosis and treatment of seizures in children are crucial to minimize the potential long-term effects on the child’s development and overall well-being. Regular check-ups with the child’s doctor, as well as ongoing communication and collaboration between the family, healthcare providers, and educators, are essential for effective seizure management and support.

What is the primary cause of seizures in children?
In most cases, the cause of seizures in children cannot be identified, a condition known as “idiopathic” or “cryptogenic” seizures.

How are seizures in children diagnosed?
Diagnosing seizures in children can be challenging, as the doctor may not witness the event. The doctor will need to rule out other conditions, order tests such as an EEG or MRI, and rely on the parent’s description of the seizure to make an accurate diagnosis.

What are the common signs and symptoms of seizures in children?
Seizures in children can manifest in various ways, including sudden muscle spasms, loss of consciousness, staring spells, and inappropriate behavior. Recognizing these different seizure symptoms is important for parents and caregivers.

What are the treatment options for seizures in children?
The primary treatment for seizures in children typically involves anticonvulsant medication to control the abnormal electrical activity in the brain. In some cases, other treatments like dietary changes or surgery may be recommended.

How can parents and caregivers help prevent and manage seizures in children?
Parents and caregivers can help prevent and manage seizures in children by identifying and avoiding potential triggers, ensuring the child gets enough sleep, and closely monitoring the child’s condition and any changes in behavior or symptoms. Early intervention and ongoing care are also crucial.

What is the long-term impact of seizures on a child’s brain?
While in the past, it was thought that seizures did not cause damage to the brain, some doubts are beginning to emerge about the potential long-term effects of seizures on a child’s brain development and overall well-being.

How can genetic research help in understanding and treating seizures in children?
Genetic research is helping experts better understand the underlying causes of different types of seizures, which may eventually lead to more targeted and effective treatments for children with seizure disorders.

Seizures in Children: Diagnosis, Causes, Signs, Treatments

Written by WebMD Editorial Contributors

• Diagnosing a Seizure in a Child
• The Risks of Seizures in Children
• Dangerous Seizures in Kids

What happens inside your child’s brain during a seizure? Here is a simplified explanation: Your brain is made up of billions of nerve cells called neurons, which communicate with one another through tiny electrical impulses. A seizure occurs when a large number of the cells send out an electrical charge at the same time. This abnormal and intense wave of electricity overwhelms the brain and results in a seizure, which can cause muscle spasms, a loss of consciousness, strange behavior, or other symptoms.

Anyone can have a seizure under certain circumstances. For instance, a fever, lack of oxygen, head trauma, or illness could bring on a seizure. People are diagnosed with epilepsy when they have seizures that occur more than once without such a specific cause. In most cases — about seven out of 10 — the cause of the seizures can’t be identified. This type of seizure is called “idiopathic” or “cryptogenic,” meaning that we don’t know what causes them. The problem may be with an uncontrolled firing of neurons in the brain that triggers a seizure.

Genetic research is teaching doctors more and more about what causes different types of seizures. Traditionally, seizures have been categorized according to how they look from the outside and what the EEG (electroencephalogram) pattern looks like. The research into the genetics of seizures is helping experts discover the particular ways different types of seizures occur. Eventually, this may lead to tailored treatments for each type of seizure that causes epilepsy.

Diagnosing a seizure can be tricky. Seizures are over so quickly that your doctor probably will never see your child having one. The first thing a doctor needs to do is rule out other conditions, such as nonepileptic seizures. These may resemble seizures, but are often caused by other factors such as drops in blood sugar or pressure, changes in heart rhythm, or emotional stress.

Your description of the seizure is important to help your doctor with the diagnosis. You should also consider bringing the entire family into the doctor’s office. The siblings of children with epilepsy, even very young kids, may notice things about the seizures that parents may not. Also, you may want to keep a video camera handy so that you can tape your child during a seizure. This may sound like an insensitive suggestion, but a video can help the doctor enormously in making an accurate diagnosis.

Some kinds of seizures, such as absence seizures, are especially difficult to catch because they may be mistaken for daydreaming.

“Nobody misses a grand mal (generalized tonic-clonic) seizure,” says William R. Turk, MD, chief of the Neurology Division at the Nemours Children’s Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. “You can’t help but notice when a person falls to the ground, shakes, and sleeps for three hours. ” But absence or staring seizures may go unnoticed for years.

Turk says you shouldn’t worry if your child gazes open-mouthed at cartoons on TV, or stares out the window in the car. Most kids who appear to be daydreaming really are just daydreaming. Instead, watch for spells that come at inappropriate times, such as when your child is in the middle of speaking or doing something, and suddenly stops.

Other kinds of seizures, such as simple or complex partial seizures, can be mistaken for different conditions, such as migraines, psychological illness, or even drug or alcohol intoxication. Medical tests are an important part of diagnosing seizures. Your child’s doctor will certainly do a physical exam and blood tests. The doctor may also order an EEG to check the electrical activity in the brain, or request a brain scan such as an MRI with a specific epilepsy protocol.

Although they may look painful, seizures don’t really cause pain. But they may be frightening for children and the people around them. Simple partial seizures, in which a child may have a sudden, overwhelming sense of terror, are especially frightening. One of the problems with complex partial seizures, for instance, is that people have no control of their actions. They may wind up doing inappropriate or bizarre things that upset people around them. It’s also possible for children to injure themselves during a seizure if they fall to the ground or hit other things around them. But the seizures themselves are usually not harmful.

Experts don’t fully understand the long-term effects of seizures on the brain. In the past, most scientists thought that seizures did not cause any damage to the brain, attributing brain damage in an individual to an underlying illness. Now, however, some doubts are beginning to emerge.

Solomon L. Moshe, MD, director of Clinical Neurophysiology and Child Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, is researching the subject and remains cautious. “I don’t think it’s good to say one way or another whether seizures do long-term damage,” he says. “I think it all depends on the individual case.”

Moshe notes that the brains of children are very flexible. They are perhaps the least likely people with epilepsy to suffer any brain damage from a seizure.

Although the majority of seizures aren’t dangerous and don’t require immediate medical attention, one kind does. Status epilepticus is a life-threatening condition in which a person has a prolonged seizure or one seizure after another without regaining consciousness in between them. Status epilepticus is more common among people with epilepsy, but about one-third of the people who develop the condition have never had a seizure before. The risks of status epilepticus increase the longer the seizure goes on, which is why you should always get emergency medical help if a seizure lasts more than five minutes.

You may also hear about a condition called Sudden Unexplained Death, in which a person dies for no known reason. It can happen to anyone, but it’s more likely to happen in a person with epilepsy. The causes aren’t known, but parents of children with epilepsy should know that it’s a very rare occurrence. Controlling seizures, especially those that occur in sleep, is the most effective plan for helping to prevent this tragedy from occurring.

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Seizures in children: Signs to look for and what to do

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Approximately 4-5% of all children will experience a seizure at some point during their childhood. About 1% of children are diagnosed with epilepsy, and 1 in 26 people develop this neurological condition during their lifetime.

Given these statistics, it’s vital for everyone to know what steps to take if they see a person having a seizure.

Seizures are common, and while a seizure may never happen to you or to a member of your family, it’s good for everybody to know what to do in case of a seizure.

What causes seizures in children?

A seizure is an abnormal electrical discharge in the brain. There are many different types of seizures and many different reasons this can occur in a child. Not all seizures are caused by epilepsy. Other causes of seizures in children can include high fever (called febrile seizures), infection or traumatic head injury.

For other kids, when they get very upset and hold their breath, they have an event that looks like a seizure where they pass out or have some stiffening or shaking. This is not considered an epileptic seizure but rather a response to the child holding their breath.

Epileptic seizures occur when sudden electrical discharges in the brain happen without another cause provoking it. Anyone at any age can develop epilepsy, but young children and older adults are at greatest risk. People with epilepsy may identify triggers that increase chance of seizure. Common seizure triggers can include illness, not taking epilepsy medication, stress, flashing lights, certain times of day, dehydration or lack of sleep.

What does a seizure look like in a child?

A seizure can look like lots of different things in a child. The most commonly recognized signs of a seizure are when the body stiffens and shakes. These types of convulsive seizures (generalized tonic-clonic or “grand mal” seizures) can cause a person to fall and injure themselves, bite their tongue or lose control of the bladder or bowel.

Other seizures are not as obvious. Some children may have a seizure but only stare into space, blank out or not respond to a parent – these are sometimes called “absence” or petit mal (staring) seizures. Often when this happens, parents might think their child is not paying attention. This type of seizure can go undiagnosed for months or even years.

Depending on the type of seizure, a child can experience many different symptoms. Common signs of a seizure include:

• Blank staring
• Confused speech
• Loss of consciousness
• Uncontrollable shaking or jerking movements
• Wandering

What to do if a child has a seizure

Seizures can be frightening for a parent or loved one. But when a child has a seizure, it’s important to remain calm and to focus on keeping the child safe.

The most important thing, and the hardest, is not to panic. Seizures can be scary to watch, but many times they will stop on their own, and seizures that stop in less than five minutes are not usually dangerous to the child.

Follow the recommendations below to help your child through the seizure safely.

First aid for convulsive seizures

If your child has a convulsion (a seizure where they lose consciousness with stiffening and shaking), follow these steps for seizure first aid:

• Stay calm and stay with your child
• Turn your child on their side
• Make your child as comfortable as possible, cushion the head and remove glasses
• Loosen any tight clothing
• Do not ever put anything in your child’s mouth
• Do not try to “stop” the convulsions or restrain your child
• Pay attention to the length of the seizure – when the seizure started and stopped
• Call 911 for any seizure lasting more than 5 minutes, or if the child is injured during the seizure

First aid for absence seizures

When a child experiences an absence or staring seizure, the most important thing to do is to stay with the child to ensure they stay safe. Make sure they are fully conscious and aware before being left on their own.

If your child has an absence seizure, follow these steps for seizure first aid:

• Stay calm and stay with your child
• Time the seizure
• Don’t grab or hold your child
• Explain to others what is happening
• Protect child from any hazards

When to seek emergency help for seizures in children

Many seizures in children will resolve on their own, and in those cases, children often do not require emergency care. However, if your child is experiencing their first seizure, you must take them to the emergency room or to your doctor to determine why it happened.

Call for emergency medical assistance if the seizure:

• Lasts more than 5 minutes
• Is the child’s first seizure
• Causes an injury due to a fall
• Causes breathing difficulty
• Is convulsive and changes to a staring seizure and the parent isn’t sure if the child is still having a seizure

If your child does not return to full awareness, seek medical assistance or call 911.

Safety precautions for children who have seizures

The biggest risk to children who have seizures is where they occur. If a child is walking down the stairs or is in the bathroom and has a seizure, the child risks falling and hurting themselves.

Most importantly, especially here in Texas in the summertime, if a child is in the water and has a seizure, they can fall under the water and drown. We tell parents to be very careful about watching kids anywhere around water, including lakes, pools, the bathtub or shower.

Take these seizure precautions to ensure your child remains safe.

• Avoid tub baths; showers are safer than baths
• Make sure the bathroom door is not locked
• No swimming without constant adult supervision
• Wear a life jacket at all times when boating or on a jet ski
• No climbing higher than 10 feet including ladders, trees and bunk beds
• Wear a helmet at all times when bike riding and horseback riding
• For children with frequent seizures, avoid bike riding on streets
• No cooking over an open stove (use microwave instead) or using an iron
• Teenagers with uncontrolled seizures shouldn’t drive, including ATVs, mini-motor cycles, 4-wheelers
• Do not allow the handling of firearms

As a parent, it will be helpful to develop a plan and to share your plan with others to help keep your child safe during a seizure. Talk to your child’s school or anyone who may be in contact with your child about seizure first aid and safety.

About 4-5% of children will have a seizure at some point during childhood. @Childrens shares signs of a seizure and how to keep your child safe during a seizure. 

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Designated as a Level 4 Epilepsy Center by the National Association of Epilepsy Centers, Children’s Medical Center Dallas provides the highest level of treatment for the most complex cases of pediatric epilepsy, with additional advanced epilepsy treatment options available at our Level 3 Epilepsy Center in Plano. Learn more about our program and services.

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Epilepsy in children

Children’s Medical Center of Neurology and Pediatrics offers you a service – treatment of epilepsy in children. Our experts have many years of experience and excellent reviews!

Epilepsy in children is one of the most common diseases associated with impaired normal functioning of the brain. The disease has been known since ancient times, in Rus’ it was called “falling”. Many famous people have suffered and are suffering from this disease, which suggests that the disease does not always carry a problem with mental health, but can leave its mark on a person’s personality. However, any chronic illness or serious injury entails / has similar consequences. This severe disease can affect a person at any age. Children and the elderly are at particular risk. Symptoms and causes of the disease are still being studied. In Russia, according to approximate data, 80% of newborns have some degree of damage to the central nervous system, and 2/3 of those suffering from epilepsy were diagnosed in childhood.

This is a chronic disease. Symptoms manifest themselves in the form of sudden seizures (epileptic seizures) with simultaneous (not always temporary, statuses – can be up to several hours + tautology, it is better to remove the word) violation of the motor, mental or mental functions of the body, arising from an excessive number of neuronal discharges in the cortex brain.

Signs of epilepsy in children

Distinctive signs of an epileptic attack in a child is that the range of various symptoms of the disease is very wide, convulsive seizures, convulsions and loss of consciousness are not always the only and fundamental manifestations of the disease. It happens that epileptic seizures are not so clear: the baby seems to freeze, stops responding to others, an absent look, and then the child also suddenly returns to his activities. And parents most often do not even know about the hidden symptoms of the manifestation of the disease, explaining this behavior simply by the inattention and excessive distraction of the child. However, if your baby periodically loses consciousness (similar to fainting), suffers from nightmares or short-term speech disorders, suffers from headaches or has sudden twitching of the limbs, do not delay, go to a consultation with a neurologist, this will help to detect the disease in time and prevent ( or delay) its dire consequences.

Recall about first aid for a child during an epileptic seizure:

The most important rule is DO NO HARM! You do not need to put anything in your child’s mouth, unclench your teeth, or pinch and hold him back. Thus, you can only make things worse, inflict additional injuries. You just need to make sure that the baby is not injured. If necessary, move to a less traumatic place, put on its side, and put a soft object under the head.

Causes of epilepsy in children

Doctors believe that there are as many causes of epilepsy in children as there are forms of its manifestation. We list some of the most basic ones that affect the onset and further development of the disease:

Pathological changes in the brain: a number of infectious diseases that the mother suffered during pregnancy, all kinds of complications, late toxicosis, birth trauma, prolonged labor, fetal hypoxia and other features of labor activity that can lead to persistent impairment of the development of the central nervous system baby.

Infectious diseases at an early age: often transferred in infancy, infections and subsequent complications lead to the development of pathological processes in the baby’s brain and the likelihood of epileptic seizures in the future.

High fever, accompanied by convulsions, can provoke the activation of epilepsy symptoms, as if unwittingly stimulating the onset of the disease.

Injuries to the skull and head suffered in infancy: sometimes the effects of injuries do not appear immediately, but after some time.

Neoplasms in the brain, tumors may also manifest as seizures.

Heredity: Recently, genetic predisposition is increasingly identified by specialists as a fundamental factor in the development of epilepsy. In 10% of cases, epilepsy may occur in a child if the family had similar problems, or other neurological diseases occurred, this also includes genetic metabolic disorders and other hereditary pathologies.

Treatment of epilepsy in children

Although medicine has made a huge leap in recent years, but unfortunately, the diagnosis of epilepsy in children still causes some difficulties. As noted above, this disease is very multifaceted, there are a huge number of different forms and manifestations of epilepsy, especially characteristic only for childhood. Therefore, the definition of a specific epileptic syndrome is the primary task of the doctor. This is connected not only with the correct selection of effective treatment, but also with the appointment of antiepileptic drugs, which are selected strictly individually, based on the characteristics of the manifestation of the disease in each particular case, taking into account the weight of a small patient, his gender, height and other personal characteristics. Parents will have to be patient, because. treatment sometimes drags on for years.

But despite the fact that epilepsy is considered a chronic disease, in most cases, therapy helps young patients cope with the disease. Even if in some cases it is impossible to fully recover, doctors manage to defeat the symptoms of the manifestation of the disease and control them in the future, and the children live an active and full life!

All medical and nursing staff of our clinic are highly qualified and professional. All our doctors are constantly practicing specialists, doctors of the highest category, doctors of sciences, associate professors. Thanks to our working methods, you can be sure that you are in a professional clinic, which means that we guarantee the result.

Epilepsy in young children.

Childhood absence epilepsy.

Cryptogenic epilepsy in children.

Rolandic epilepsy in children.

Symptoms of epilepsy in children, causes, methods of prevention

Epilepsy is a chronic, long-term disease caused by various lesions of the central nervous system and manifesting itself in paroxysmal conditions, and subsequently characteristic personality changes.

The causes of epilepsy have not been definitively established. More than 3/4 of all patients belong to the age group up to 18 years.

Causes

• Hereditary factors.
• Disturbances in the development of the brain, caused by both genetic diseases and infections, the effect of harmful substances on the body of a pregnant mother, a disease of her internal organs.
• Meningitis and encephalitis.
• Brain injury.

Symptoms

Classical epileptic seizure (suddenly occurring, short in time, as a rule, many times recurring, with precise time limits, a painful condition). It develops suddenly and most often for no apparent reason.

In its course, it is customary to distinguish a number of successive stages:

• 1. Precursors: headache, feeling of discomfort, dissatisfaction with one’s own condition, irritability, decreased mood, decreased efficiency.
• 2. Aura. May manifest as hallucinations. In this case, the child can see various pictures, which most often have a frightening, frightening character. In addition to various visual images, auditory deceptions may also occur, and unpleasant odors may be felt.
• 3. Tonic phase of seizure. Suddenly the child loses consciousness, all the muscles are very tense, but there are no convulsions yet. The kid falls sharply to the floor, almost always bites his tongue. During the fall, a very characteristic cry is emitted, which occurs when the chest is compressed by the respiratory muscles due to its tonic tension. The patient stops breathing, the skin first turns pale, and then acquires a bluish tint. There is involuntary urination and defecation. Pupillary reaction to light is completely absent. This phase lasts no more than one minute, since with a longer course, death can occur from respiratory arrest.
• 4. Clonic phase. Characterized by the development of a classic convulsive seizure. Breathing is fully restored. Foam comes out of the patient’s mouth with small amounts of blood mixed in. The phase lasts 2–3 minutes.
• 5. After the convulsions gradually subside, the child sinks into a coma , which, in turn, then passes into a deep sleep. After awakening, the patient loses memory for all the events that occurred during the attack. In the future, some violations of orientation in space persist, some speech impairment

In the diagnosis of epilepsy, the most valuable and informative method is electroencephalography (EEG). With its help, it is possible to identify not only the very fact of the presence of pathological changes in the brain, but also accurately determine the size and location of the lesion. An important positive quality of the EEG is the ability to distinguish true epilepsy from other similar seizures that are not associated with epilepsy.

Prevention

• Carry out early diagnosis, monitoring of the mother’s condition during pregnancy.