Unexplained seizures, must be alerted to brain tumors

  Seizures are a common neurological phenomenon, and the most familiar form is grand mal seizure, commonly known as “goat’s horn”, with sudden foaming at the mouth, loss of consciousness, and twitching of limbs, but this is only one form of seizure. In fact, there are various forms of seizures, but the most common form of seizures caused by brain tumor is phantom smell and taste, and other forms such as limb twitching and facial twitching are also more common. Intracranial tumors cause about one-third of seizures, and many brain tumors even start with seizures. Tumors located in the supratentorial hemisphere are particularly likely to cause seizures, while frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital tumors may cause seizures, and subscalene tumors rarely cause seizures.  Glioma is a common intracranial primary neurological tumor. Throughout the course of glioma, more than 90% of patients will develop seizures. The timing and form of seizures are related to the subtype of glioma, tumor location, distance from the cortex, and genotype. Half a month ago, Mr. Zhao suddenly fainted without warning, while his arms and legs twitched, and lasted for half an hour before gradually waking up, and everything was basically normal after waking up. But this had never happened to Mr. Zhao before, so Mr. Zhao was very worried and came to the hospital for examination. A local check of cranial CT showed a large hypodense lesion in the left frontal lobe, and further MRI revealed an extensive lesion in the left frontal lobe, partially extending to the right frontal lobe, with no obvious enhancement of the lesion, but showing obvious compression of the brain tissue structure, reporting a higher possibility of a low-grade glioma. Surgical resection confirmed that it was a mesenchymal astrocytoma, WHO grade III, IDH mutant type. After the tumor was removed and the pathological diagnosis was clarified, Mr. Zhao continued his follow-up treatment in the hospital.  The etiology of epilepsy is very complex, and brain tumors are one of the common causes. Other non-tumor diseases such as traumatic brain injury, infection and vascular diseases are also capable of causing acute symptomatic seizures, so epilepsy is not a clinical manifestation unique to brain tumors. However, many types of brain tumors can cause seizures. Malignant brain tumors such as glioma, metastases, meningioma or benign brain tumors can cause seizures. During the growth of brain tumor, it stimulates the surrounding brain tissue causing a series of changes in the surrounding brain tissue, which leads to seizures.  For people like Mr. Zhao, who never had seizures before, sudden onset of seizures for unknown reasons, even if they quickly return to normal, should be alert to the possibility of lesions in the brain, especially if there is a brain tumor.