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Epilepsy
Epilepsy is medically defined as the inclination to have repeated fits or seizures. The fit is generally caused due to a sudden break of extra electrical activity in human brain. It results in having a temporary distraction in the passing of normal message between the brain cells. The outcome of disruption in the messages of brain becomes blocked or mixed up.
Human brain is responsible to make all parts of body function smoothly. What you actually experience during a seizure will depend on where in your brain the activity of epileptic starts and how extensively and rapidly it.
Types of seizures
There are many different types of epilepsy, partially in infancy, childhood and adolescence. Epilepsy can be regarded in terms of--
- Generalized and partial epilepsy - the site of seizure origin in the brain
- Primary epilepsy - the underlying cause of seizures idiopathic where epilepsy occurs in a normal person. It can be traced to a hereditary predisposition to seizures.
- Secondary or symptomatic epilepsy - seizures are due to the inherent abnormality of brain structure and sometimes related with the neurological problems.
Sometimes brain damage is caused by a complicated birth and a hard blow to the head; a stroke that hampers oxygen to the brain, or the infection of brain like meningitis.
How epilepsy is diagnosed?
The diagnosis of epilepsy is based on the account of seizure that the person gives themselves and also of the account given by the eye witness. The hospital tests give the more detail account to the doctor in diagnosis. The patient is not every time required to have all tests. In the present times of medical treatments, there is no one test that can mark out that the patient has epilepsy or not. The epilepsy experts can however use their own expert knowledge with the test results.
As the epilepsy patient if you think that you have the epileptic seizures you should first consult your family doctor. Get check up from your family doctor when you feel that you may have had a fit. He or she may further refer you to see an epilepsy specialist. You may find the dedicated clinics for epilepsy that offer additional services with counselors or epilepsy specialist nurse.
Treatment of Epilepsy
The medical science has not formulated any treatment or cure for epilepsy. Nevertheless, if the patient takes the right kind and dose of anti-epileptic medicines, approximately 70 per cent of epilepsy patients can have their fits in control completely. The best treatment to control epilepsy that the patients have devised successfully is the anti-epileptic drugs or AEDs. They have become quite common these days. AEDs, as such, do not cure epilepsy. Their main objective is to prevent fits or seizures by acting in some way to control the excitableness of the brain.