Transcription
What is a seizure? That's a very... because frequently she something very bad happening to the brain and to the body.
The seizure, by definition, is an abnormal electrical discharge from the brain. That's considered to be parasitic, meaning out of synchrony with the rest of the discharges from the brain. This was long treated as a disease, but in fact, if one goes as far back as Temple Fay, who was a neurosurgeon in the 1940s and 1950s, he recognized seizures as a symptom of something wrong with the brain. So we have to look at seizures as a symptom, not as a disease. And treat the symptoms, like treating fever with an aspirin, is not treating the disease.
When a person has seizures, we have to treat the brain. Very frequently, seizures result from an area of the brain that does not receive enough oxygen. So part of the treatment of the seizures is going to see what can be done to improve the oxygenation of that area at the brain. The seizure itself is an attempt to bring more oxygen to that area of the brain.
So the way we recognize seizures clinically, it's an abnormal movement of the body. It might be just a twitch of the eye, or it might be a convulsion of the whole side of one of the of an arm and a leg, the leg. Or it may be a convulsion of the entire body with sometimes loss of consciousness. It's short-lasting. It usually is a question of a few seconds or a minute. And then after the seizure, if it's a major seizure with convulsions of the whole body, there may be a period of time when the person is sleepy or lethargic. And then they come out of it, and they're back to their normal activities.
Seizures may be repetitive or may occur just once in a lifetime. A seizure, a good thing or a bad thing? One can look at that two ways. From the point of view of traditional neurologists, the seizure is potentially a bad thing because if a person is up and walking around when they have a seizure, they can fall and they can get hurt. And they can get seriously hurt. They can bang their head on a hard ground and wind up with a very serious injury to the brain.
On the other hand, since seizure is a symptom of something going on in the brain, it's like a warning sign. But in that sense, it's a good thing, just the same way as a fever is a warning sign of an infection in the body. If we have a warning sign, that's a good thing because then we can do something about it. If we didn't have seizures, we might have terrible problems in the brain and not really know about them in the proper way.
In addition, depending on the type of seizure one has, which side of the body is shaking or convulsing, it gives some indication of which side of the brain the problem is on. So in that sense, a seizure is a good thing. It's a warning sign. It's a protection. It's a way of protecting the brain.
Is a seizure really life-threatening? There is one instance where seizure could be life-threatening. There is a type of seizure that's called status epilepticus. That is a situation where one seizure occurs after another with no interval between seizures, between convulsive attacks. And during that period, there's a tendency for the body to hold its breath. And in those instances, one can see the patient actually turning blue from lack of oxygen because they're not breathing. And if there isn't intermediate intervention of some kind, that kind of seizure can kill. It has to be dealt with. It's considered an emergency. And that is the only seizure that I know of that can kill.
The only other time a seizure could potentially kill is if it occurs during the sleep and the patient is flat on their belly where their head buried in a soft pillow or in a bundle of blankets, and they don't turn their head in time to take a deep breath. That is a very rare instance. So the only TV that is bad and that can kill is the status epilepticus. Epilepticus, status epilepticus is an emergency. By that, it means getting the patient immediately to an emergency room and getting appropriate treatment to suppress that moment of seizure.