Epilepsy- watch out for these symptoms and its treatment procedures -

Epilepsy is a disease that affects the brain and quickly spreads to other parts resulting in loss of consciousness. Watch out for these symptoms of Epilepsy and its treatment procedures.

Epilepsy is a disease that affects the brain like any other disease affecting any part of the body. It is caused basically due to an abnormal electrical surge that happens in the brain in a particular area and quickly spreads to other parts resulting in loss of consciousness, associated with violent movement of hands and legs, frothing in the mouth, cry with passing urine in clothes and remain unresponsive for a while and then gradually recover. Once they recover, a lot of them complain of muscle pain and body pain.

The good news is that epilepsy is treatable. Epilepsy is of many types. In case of generalized tonic-clonic seizures, a person cries and falls down, lose consciousness, have movement of hands and legs and tongue bite. There is yet another type of epilepsy called Focal epilepsy- this involves twitching of face and hands which lasts for a while and is associated with little numbness and then settles down. Usually any of these conditions causes little weakness after the convulsions, and then they recover gradually. There is yet another type of epilepsy called as Complex partial seizures. This is often associated with peculiar deep sinking feeling in the stomach, automatic movement of tongue and lips and smacking which lasts for few seconds and then slowly becomes normal.

Children can present with brief loss of touch with the surroundings. They with be talking but suddenly start staring, after sometime they will again begin the conversation. This is known as Absence attacks. Also, there are different types of primary idiopathic epilepsies. This can be diagnosed with EEG. Whenever these seizures occur at a later part, after 25 years of age, it is called late onset of epilepsy and all these needs to be investigated with a CT Scan or MRI to find the underlying abnormality in the brain.

There are a group of epilepsies which manifest because of a disease – can be an injury, infection, bleeding in the brain, blood clot, tumor or any vascular abnormality inducing abnormal electrical activity in the brain, this is called as Secondary epilepsy.

In any case, epilepsy needs to be investigated thoroughly. If you find the underlying cause, it needs to be treated medically or surgically. In case of an idiopathic epilepsy, they need to be controlled with medications.

Symptoms of Epilepsy and its treatment:

EEG helps to establish the presence of electrical disturbances. Initially treatment is done with medications, called anti-epileptic drugs. These drugs have to be continued for 3-5 years depending on the severity of the epilepsy. Usually, epilepsy is controlled with one drug, if necessary, they will be put on second and a third dose. Majority of the patients require just medical therapy and if they continue for a sufficient period of time then it will be cured in majority. However, the compliance is very important. Most patients discontinue and further complicate the disease thereby increasing the number of doses as well as the duration of the treatment.

Whenever epilepsy is not controlled with usual medication, or epilepsy is changing its pattern,associated with headache, associated with neurological deficits need to be investigated extensively to find the underlying abnormality in the brain.

There is one emergency condition called Status Epilepticus. Normally,whenever there is an epilepsy attack, within few hours they recover from this condition. If there are series of attacks one after the other without a break it is called Status Epilepticus. It is a medical emergency and need to be treated aggressively, if not it can be life threatening.