What Does It Look Like When a Baby Has a Seizure

Seizures in Children

What are seizures?

Seizures happen when brain cells fire or "talk" as well much, temporarily disrupting the encephalon'due south normal electric signals. They're quite common, especially in infants and immature children, and they have a broad range of causes. Sometimes, seizures are triggered by a disease or injury, but for most children, there is no detectable crusade. Sometimes other conditions, such every bit fainting or stroke, tin look like seizures.

Encounter Kristen

When medication failed to treat her seizures, Kristen decided to undergo surgery for epilepsy.

What are the symptoms of a seizure?

A child may accept a broad variety of symptoms depending on their type of seizures. Some seizures are easy to recognize through signs like shaking or temporarily losing consciousness. Other seizures are so mild that you might not even recognize them as seizures: They might involve only a visual hallucination, for case, or a moment of very stiff emotions. In some cases, seizures have no outward signs at all.

Some signs that your kid may be experiencing seizures include:

• staring
• tremors, convulsions, or jerking movements in the arms and legs
• stiffening of the body
• loss of consciousness
• breathing bug
• loss of bowel or bladder control
• falling suddenly for no credible reason
• non responding to noise or words for short periods of fourth dimension
• appearing dislocated or in a brume
• farthermost sleepiness and irritability when waking upward in the morning time
• head nodding
• periods of rapid eye blinking and staring
• vomiting
• changes in vision, spoken language, or both

Sometimes these symptoms tin can take a cause other than seizures. Further testing will help doctors confirm suspected seizures or find another condition that is causing the symptoms.

Seizures don't necessarily harm the brain, just some seizures exercise crusade damage. The side effects of seizures, such as dramatic changes in behavior and personality, may remain even when your kid isn't actually having a seizure. In some cases, seizures are associated with long-term neurological weather condition and problems with learning and behavior.

During the seizure itself, children may fall or get injured. Information technology'due south of import to stay with your kid during a seizure. Gently ease the kid to the floor if sitting or standing, turn them on their side in case of vomiting and remove any surrounding hard objects. Seizures may exit your kid wearied. Unfortunately, simply every bit troubling equally the physical complications, seizures can besides cause embarrassment and social isolation.

What are the different types of seizures?

Focal seizures

Focal seizures, formerly called partial seizures, happen when aberrant electrical activity has its onset in a particular area of the brain, known every bit the "seizure focus." They tin can occur in any lobe of the brain. Before a focal seizure, your kid may feel an aura — a strange feeling that involves changes in hearing, vision, or sense of smell.

Focal seizures may terminal less than a infinitesimal and have unlike symptoms depending on which area of the brain is involved. They unremarkably impact the muscles, causing a multifariousness of aberrant movements that are limited to one muscle group, such as the fingers or the larger muscles in the artillery and legs. If the aberrant activity is in the encephalon'south occipital lobe, your kid may feel changes in vision. Your child may feel sweating or nausea or go pale but will not lose consciousness.

Focal seizures may be associated with contradistinct consciousness. Your child tin experience a diverseness of behaviors, such every bit gagging, lip smacking, running, screaming, crying, or laughing. After the seizure, during what's called the postictal period, your child may feel tired.

Generalized seizures

Generalized seizures involve both sides of the brain. Children lose consciousness and have a postictal period (a recovery stage) after the seizure. The types of generalized seizures include:

• Absence seizures (too chosen petit mal seizures) involve episodes of staring and an altered state of consciousness. They usually final no longer than 30 seconds merely tin happen several times a day. Your child'southward mouth or face may motion, or eyes may blink. Afterward, your child may non recall the seizure and may human action as if nothing happened. Absenteeism seizures almost always start between ages iv and 12 and are sometimes mistaken for a learning or behavioral problem.
• Atonic seizures involve a sudden loss of muscle tone and may crusade drop attacks: Your child may autumn from a standing position or all of a sudden drop their head. During the seizure, your kid is limp and unresponsive.
• Tonic seizures involve a sudden stiffening of parts of the trunk or the unabridged body. Brief tonic seizures may also cause drib attacks.
• Generalized tonic-clonic seizures (also called GTC or thou mal seizures) are characterized past 5 distinct phases:
1. flexing of your child'south body, arms, and legs
2. straightening out of their body
3. tremors (shakes)
4. wrinkle and relaxing of the muscles (the clonic menstruum)
5. a postictal period in which your child may be tired and sleepy, have bug with vision or speech, or have a bad headache or body aches

Myoclonic seizures

Myoclonic seizures involve sudden jerking in a group of muscles. These seizures tend to occur in clusters, happening several times a solar day or for several days in a row.

Infantile spasms

Infantile spasms are a rare type of seizure disorder that occurs in the first year of life. They usually involve cursory periods of move in the neck, trunk, or legs, ofttimes when a child is waking up or trying to go to sleep. They commonly last only a few seconds, but infants may have hundreds of these seizures a twenty-four hour period. This can be a serious problem and can be associated with long-term complications. Spasms may also occur throughout life and can also crusade driblet attacks.

Condition epilepticus

Status epilepticus is a situation in which seizures develop into a prolonged seizure of 30 minutes or longer duration. This status is a medical emergency and may require hospitalization.

Febrile seizures

Febrile seizures are triggered past fever and usually happen in children between 6 months and 5 years of age. They involve muscle contractions — either mild (such as stiffening of the limbs) or astringent (convulsions). Delirious seizures are fairly common, impact nearly 2 to five percentage of children in the U.S., and frequently run in families. Febrile seizures that final less than 15 minutes are called "simple"; those lasting longer are called "complex."

What causes seizures in children?

Seizures can take a wide variety of forms, depending in office on what part of the brain has the abnormal electrical activity. Many different diseases and injuries can cause children to have seizures. These include:

• caput injuries
• birth trauma
• congenital conditions (weather that your child is born with)
• poisoning
• fever or infection
• encephalon tumors
• maternal disease during pregnancy
• heredity
• degenerative brain disorders
• stroke
• metabolic problems and chemical imbalances in the body
• alcohol or drugs
• medications

Ofttimes, however, the exact cause of seizures cannot exist adamant.

How nosotros treat seizures

Treatments for seizures have expanded greatly in recent years and include a variety of medications, specialized diets, or, in serious cases, a variety of brain surgeries. At Boston Children's Hospital, we intendance for children who have epilepsy or who have experienced seizures through the Epilepsy Center, Fetal-Neonatal Neurology Program, and many other programs that are dedicated to caring for children with disorders that may cause seizures.

Our areas of innovation for seizures

Physicians and researchers at Boston Children'due south Hospital are constantly looking for safer, more than effective treatments to help children alive seizure-free. Nosotros typically take several clinical trials going on at any time. Our doctors are:

• searching for and testing new anti-seizure drugs
• developing better methods for diagnosing and treating seizures
• looking for ways to forbid other conditions from triggering seizures
• evaluating new imaging techniques that help surgeons avoid damaging functional brain tissue

The commitment and pity with which nosotros care for all children and families is matched merely past the pioneering spirit of discovery and innovation that drives us to recall differently, to notice answers, and to build a improve tomorrow for children everywhere.

Kevin B. Churchwell, President and CEO

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Source: https://www.childrenshospital.org/conditions-and-treatments/conditions/s/seizures