There are differences between panic attacks and epilepsy in terms of disease characteristics and clinical manifestations. The former is mainly a sudden panic and other discomforts, which lasts for a long time and is conscious, while the latter has partial and generalized seizures, which are more transient and often accompanied by impaired consciousness.
1. Panic attack:
(1) Disease characteristics: This disease is a group of intense anxiety and fear with mainly somatic symptoms, the onset of the disease is more acute and rapid development, usually reaching the peak of anxiety in about 10 minutes, and lasts for 20 to 30 minutes. The main manifestations are a sense of dying, a sense of loss of control, accompanied by fidgeting, muscle tension, generalized trembling or weakness.
(2) Clinical manifestations: panic attacks are usually accompanied by severe autonomic dysfunction symptoms, such as chest tightness, sweating, dyspnea, excessive arousal, cardiac arrhythmia, tachycardia, dizziness, headache, numbness of the limbs and so on. During the whole process of panic attack, the patient’s consciousness is always clear.
2. Epilepsy:
(1) Disease characteristics: caused by highly synchronized abnormal discharges of neurons in the brain, including partial seizures of local involuntary twitching of limbs, abnormal sensations in part of the body, excessive sweating and other autonomic seizure symptoms, memory disorders or delusions and other psychiatric symptoms; or generalized seizures of generalized convulsions, muscle tonus, disorientation seizures and so on.
(2) Clinical manifestations: Clinical symptoms usually have the same characteristics, including sudden onset and discontinuation of clinical symptoms, with completely normal intervals; seizure duration is usually short, from a few seconds to a few minutes; repeated seizures occur, and the clinical manifestations of each seizure are almost the same. Most seizures are accompanied by impaired consciousness and there is no recollection of the seizure.