Epilepsy is a common and prevalent disease in childhood, characterized by sudden seizures, unpredictable seizure duration, and the need for long-term treatment. At the same time, children are in a critical period of mental and physical development and learning, and there are still some prejudices and misconceptions about epilepsy in the society, so parents of children with epilepsy often face great pressure in psychological, physical and financial aspects. Therefore, it is necessary for parents of children to correctly understand the treatment procedures and precautions for epilepsy, and to cooperate with treatment with a positive and optimistic attitude.
Childhood is the peak of epilepsy onset
The incidence of epilepsy is highest during childhood, with the highest incidence during the first year of life and decreasing after the age of 10. Epilepsy is one of the most common and prevalent diseases in childhood.
1. What are the causes of epilepsy in children?
The causes of epilepsy have been mentioned in the previous sections. As in adults, epilepsy in children can be classified by etiology as idiopathic, symptomatic and cryptogenic. The common causes of childhood epilepsy include: perinatal injuries, congenital metabolic or developmental abnormalities, idiopathic or genetic syndromes, central nervous system infections, developmental malformations of the brain, neurodegenerative diseases, craniocerebral trauma, and brain tumors.
2. Why do children get epilepsy?
This is a concern for all parents of children with epilepsy. The pathogenesis of epilepsy itself is a very complex issue, and many issues are still unclear. Although the diagnosis of the cause is important in determining treatment and prognosis, there are still some patients whose cause is not clear to date. Parents of affected children should accept this fact. It is believed that with scientific progress, the pathogenesis of epilepsy will become clearer and clearer.
3. Is it the parents’ fault that their child has epilepsy?
It is a common phenomenon for parents to blame themselves when their children have the disease. Many parents of children with epilepsy want to find the cause of their child’s epilepsy and first consider whether their own problems caused their child’s illness. This includes genetic causes or other issues such as medication use during pregnancy. In fact, epilepsy is the result of a combination of factors, and epilepsy inheritance is a complex issue.
Therefore, it is most sensible and feasible for parents to face the reality correctly, while blaming themselves or each other for the actual control of their child’s condition does not do any good.
The most important thing is that you have to be careful about what you do.
The public has some understanding of epilepsy with the popularity of science. Once a child has seizure symptoms, parents often associate it with the possibility of “epilepsy”. It is important to note that seizure disorders are not always epilepsy; and there are many forms of seizures, in addition to the familiar “jerking”, such as dazed, automatic, etc. are all seizures. The actual fact is that there are a number of people who are using the guise of “curing epilepsy with no side effects” and using the signboard of “secret Chinese medicine recipes” to deceive patients, and they can even “send medicine” if they make a phone call about their condition. “In fact, the diagnosis of epilepsy is based on a number of factors.
In fact, the diagnosis of epilepsy is based on a systematic analysis of the patient’s medical history, combined with the results of the necessary tests. It is recommended that parents must visit an epilepsy specialist at a regular hospital and undergo regular treatment on the premise of a clear diagnosis.
1. Are seizure symptoms always epilepsy?
Seizure symptoms in children are not always epilepsy, some are normal “seizures” and some are other seizure disorders. If these non-epileptic seizures are misdiagnosed as epilepsy, the diagnosis of epilepsy will be “expanded”, causing unnecessary physical and psychological damage and financial burden to the child and parents. If the child’s “seizures” are monitored by video EEG and there are no abnormal discharges on the EEG during the seizure period, epilepsy can be ruled out.
Many diseases or physiological phenomena manifest themselves in the form of seizures during the various periods of a child’s growth.
(1) Neonatal period: About 50% of immature children have “periodic respiration”, which is characterized by rapid or slow breathing and brief cessation of breathing, but is distinctly different from seizures in that there is no change in heart rate or skin color. Newborns who have had mild asphyxia during delivery are also prone to a “hypervigilant state” seizure, which can startle parents. The child first sleeps for a few hours without eating or drinking, then turns hyperactive, with eyes wide open, waking for long periods of time and sleeping for short periods of time, and is often misdiagnosed as having a seizure. But in the neonatal period, there is no type of aphasic seizure at all.
(2) Infancy: When the child reaches a few months of age, a type of convulsion called “tremor” is often misdiagnosed as epilepsy. The child has small, rhythmic jerks or twitches of the jaw or limbs. This is a normal overreaction of a sleeping newborn to a sudden awakening stimulus such as a diaper change. There is no abnormality other than trembling. The twitching is significantly reduced or stopped when the shaking limb is gently pressed with the hand, and this is clearly different from seizures.
Non-epileptic seizures in infancy and early childhood also include breath-holding seizures, non-epileptic tonic-like seizures, and affective cross-leg rubbing movement seizures.
(3) Preschool and school age: there will be more forms of nonepileptic seizures that need to be differentiated from epilepsy, such as sleep myoclonus, episodic sleeping sickness, nightmares, nocturnal sleepwalking, multiple tics, and syncope, migraine, and hysteria.