Seizure

Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder characterized as two or more unprovoked seizures twenty-four hours apart, one unprovoked seizure with the probability of more seizures equivalent to the general recurrence risk, or an epilepsy syndrome diagnosis [1]. Epilepsy affects 50 million people worldwide [2]. The prevalence rate of active epilepsy in the US is 1.2%, or about 3.4 million people [3]. Of those with epilepsy, about one third are refractory cases, meaning their seizures are not controlled despite the use ...

Early infantile epileptic encephalopathies are a heterogeneous group of diseases characterized by severe, drug-resistant, neonatal-onset seizures, frequently associated with global developmental delay.

Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a rare, multisystem genetic disorder, characterised by the formation of tumours in various organs, such as the brain, kidneys and skin [1,2]. The disorder is highly heterogenous and is associated with a spectrum of additional neurological or neuropsychiatric manifestations including epilepsy, intellectual disability, behavioural disorders, and autism [2–4]. Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder in individuals with TSC and results in significant morbidity and mortality [3,5,6].

Patients with a first seizure or newly established epilepsy undergo routine diagnostics, mainly EEG and neuroimaging. First, these serve to clarify if a diagnosis of epilepsy can be established. Second, they aid in establishing epilepsy classification and etiology. However, test results may not be definite and clinical circumstances may demand additional laboratory tests including cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis. This review aims at exploring the impact of seizures on CSF results and when CSF analysis is useful in (differential) diagnosis of ...

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Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, with a worldwide childhood prevalence of 0.5% to 0.9% [1]. Children with epilepsy often have cognitive deficits and academic problems, and are burdened with social incompetence [2]; moreover, they are also reported to have low self-esteem and high familial stress related to epilepsy [2]. Childhood-onset epilepsy is thus associated with adverse psychosocial outcomes on education, employment, and personal relationships during adulthood [3, 4].

It is known that Lamtrigine Lamotrigine (LTG) can cause paradoxal paradoxical drug-induced seizures especially in children with myoclonic epilepsy and is usually avoided in patients with severe myoclonic epilepsy of infancy (Dravet syndrome) [1]. However, LTG is considered quite safe and generally well-tolerated by healthy subjects with few side effects such as mild morbiliform morbilliform rash [1]. Recently, few cases reported in the literature showed that LTG can cause movement disorders, such as ataxia, tics, chorea, and dystonia [2,3].

The example set by the San Servolo course, an educational initiative of ILAE President Giuliano Avanzini (Italy), was followed in 2005 by Dr. Meir Bialer (Israel) with the first of the biennial Eilat International Educational Courses on the Pharmacological Treatment of Epilepsy. In the same year, Peter Wolf (Denmark), as the new ILAE President, declared education as the number one priority of his term of office and encouraged the international community to launch new educational initiatives. The first of these, ...

Childhood epilepsies are a family of neurological disorders defined not only by propensity to unprovoked seizures but by potential neurodevelopmental and mental health comorbidities1, together placing a psychosocial burden on the child with epilepsy and their families2-4. Optimal management of health service delivery in the UK context, according to the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines5, comprises timely access to a paediatrician with a special interest in epilepsy as well as a paediatric ESN.

Epilepsies are defined by the occurrence of spontaneous and recurrent seizures [1]. Seizures are characterized by electrophysiological (field potential) signatures, varying from one patient to the next and even within a given patient [2]. Given such variability, it is important to rely on a taxonomy of seizures, not only for mechanistic studies (different seizures may be associated with different underlying mechanisms, hence to different pharmacotherapy) but also for diagnostic purposes (particularly for presurgical evaluation in the case of drug-resistant epilepsies).