EPILEPSY

Epilepsy

Epilepsy

Summary

Epilepsy, in itself is not a disease, but rather a term having a tendency towards seizures. In fact, anyone can get a seizure because of a particular illness or other circumstances such as; an accident or injury. The term epilepsy is used only when there is a sudden and repeated attacks. A seizure is a sudden brain dysfunction, in which all or part of the brain cells synchronize their steps in the wrong way and at the same time begins to send electrical impulses (Baloh, 1984, pp. 59-64). It depends on the location and dispersion of the synchronization, the attack may have multiple attributes. The most common seizure involves the whole body, leading to minute loss of consciousness, but it can also take a few seconds and characterized by impaired consciousness, which even difficult to detect. The periods between the occurrence of further attacks may last from a few minutes up to several years, and in the meantime the patient does not feel anything wrong. Seizure type indicates the area of the brain that is affected, and what type of epilepsy we have to deal with. There are many causes of epilepsy and, there are mainly two types of epilepsy such as; idiopathic and symptomatic. Idiopathic epilepsy, a genetic defect causes internal transmission system in the brain and, therefore, it can be inherited (Baloh, 1984, pp. 59-64). Symptomatic epilepsy often manifests itself after finding of external influences, such as brain damage, the impact of toxic substances, brain infection, or metabolic disorders.

Introduction

Due to the long history of epilepsy, it created many divisions due to various factors. Old division include grand mal epileptic seizures, manifested as loss of consciousness, convulsions and unconscious urination and petit mall. The latter, unlike the Grand seizures had no contractions, the patient lost consciousness only. In the old division there were also attacks with seizures in different parts of the muscle, psychomotor attacks in which the patient is confused, the actions are uncoordinated and irrational behavior (Overwig, 1985). The last group in this division were not epileptic states of consciousness. They lasted a few days, during which time the person performed unreasonable unsafe practices which normally would never do.

The risk of a child to suffer from epilepsy is at 6 percent, if a parent has epilepsy. If both parents are sick epilepsy, the risk increases to 10 percent to 12 percent. However, a total of 90 percent of children of epileptic parents remain without epilepsy. The risk of transmission is independent of the seizure type. Usually fall ill children whose parents are ill epilepsy, in younger years of life with epilepsy than their parents.

The cause of epilepsy is unknown in about 50 percent of the time because you cannot find any evidence of a suspected underlying disease of the brain. We understand that when there is a type of cryptogenic epilepsy (Overwig, 1985). If the cause is not clear, it is called idiopathic epilepsy. In the other 50 percent of cases, a probable cause can be ...