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Portrait of a Child with Epilepsy Taking Control of Seizures: A Personal Look Seizure Control: What Can You Take for Epilepsy?

Epilepsy

Treatment Options for Children with Epilepsy

Summary & Participants

In the past, treating kids with epilepsy might have meant using a combination of drugs that had unwanted side effects. Now it's possible for kids to take only one drug with fewer side effects.

Medically Reviewed On: June 12, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: You've just heard your child has epilepsy. You're not alone. Each year the parents of 45,000 children under the age of 15 hear that their children have this neurologic condition.

MICHAEL DUCHOWNY, MD: In epilepsy there is a tendency for regions of the brain to electrically discharge all at the same time. When that happens, the manifestations are a seizure, and the manifestations reflect where in the brain the seizure has come from.

ANNOUNCER: Some forms of seizures may disappear as the child gets older.

MICHAEL DUCHOWNY, MD: Small children, usually under the age of three, are prone to a certain type of seizure called febrile seizure, which is a seizure associated with a high fever. It peaks at 18 months and is generally gone by age three.

TREVOR RESNICK, MD: The most common form of partial seizures, meaning seizures involving just a localized area in the brain in children is something called benign rolandic epilepsy. And that's a form of seizure that occurs usually at night, characterized by gagging or drooling. And almost always as the child grows older and into adolescence, the seizures go away.

ANNOUNCER: But there are also childhood seizures, which persist into adulthood.

TREVOR RESNICK, MD: There are various kinds of generalized seizures that are characterized by generalized body stiffening or by just staring blankly ahead or by having staring followed by jerking, followed by stiffening.

There are seizures that are partial. Those seizures are unassociated with a change in consciousness. So for example, a child may be jerking the left arm and be able to say, "What's wrong with me? My left arm is jerking."

Partial complex seizures render the child to have a change in consciousness where they're not entirely with it.

ANNOUNCER: Since epilepsy can appear in different ways, it's often hard to identify. Physicians rely on a variety of information to pinpoint the problem.

TREVOR RESNICK, MD: The history that you get from the family or the patient really is your best clue. And the backbone diagnostic help for the diagnosis of a patient with seizures or epilepsy is an EEG, which is a brainwave test.

ANNOUNCER: Of course eliminating the seizures is on every parent's, and every child's, wish list. For years medication gave some relief but it came at a cost.

TREVOR RESNICK, MD: So you may get an effect on cognition. You may get dizziness. You may get double vision. There may be various other kinds of effects on brain function. The older medications had a greater propensity to have those kinds of side effects, but not always.

ANNOUNCER: These kinds of side effects could be almost as bad as the seizures.

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