Epilepsy can occur in an individual at any age, but this disorder most often strikes children and older adults. Epilepsy scrambles the electrical signals inside the human brain, resulting in various types of seizures. Epilepsy is hard to diagnose in many instances, as these incidents rarely occur in a doctor's office, making the physician search for answers with a number of tests and an extensive look into a patient's medical history.
Types
The classic symptom of epilepsy is a seizure, but there are many types of seizures that someone with this ailment can be subject to. Seizures that are precipitated by strange activity in one section of the brain are called partial seizures, while those that are generated by seemingly the entire brain are called generalized seizures. Most people that suffer from epilepsy will experience the same type of seizure each time they have an episode, but in some cases, a person can have different kinds.
Symptoms
A simple partial seizure is a mild symptom of epilepsy, with the patient not losing consciousness. In this kind of seizure, he may simply feel emotions or senses change. The complex partial seizure can make a person black out for a short time; people with this seizure have been known to simply stare blankly or constantly repeat common movements such as rubbing his hands until it passes. Generalized seizures have scarier symptoms, with absence seizures the least frightening; they are characterized by such things as staring and slight body movements. Myoclonic seizures come with quick jerking motion of the legs and arms. During an atonic seizure, a person can fall down out of the blue. The grand-mal seizure is the strongest of all epileptic seizures, causing the person to pass out and his body to stiffen up and shake. It comes with the potential for loss of control of the bladder and the biting of the own tongue.
Causes
In as many as half of those with epilepsy, the cause of the condition cannot be identified. Some kinds of epilepsy have been associated with defective types of genes that control how brain cells interact with each other. There also appears to be a link between epilepsy and outside factors such as head trauma from an accident or certain diseases. For example, strokes and tumors can bring about epilepsy. Heredity also seems to have a role in people having epilepsy, but how much of a part and what it is remains a mystery.
Identification
To diagnose epilepsy, a doctor will have to have a very descriptive account of any seizures that have occurred. This often means speaking to an individual who has witnessed a seizure, since many times the person who has one will not remember anything about it. Neurological tests that can determine reflexes, muscle strength, balance and other key functions may be called for. Blood tests can reveal if the epilepsy is perhaps being brought about by conditions such as diabetes or anemia.
Prevention/Solution
There a number of scans and tests available to a physician to help come to a diagnosis of epilepsy. An electroencephalogram tracks electrical activity in the brain and can reveal abnormal brain patterns even when there is no seizure occurring. A CT scan, which is short for computerized tomography, is an x-ray that can show cross sections of the brain and detect tumors, cysts and other things that can be responsible for epileptic symptoms. Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, employs radio waves and a magnetic field to manufacture an image of the brain for this same purpose. Positron emission tomography, otherwise known as a PET scan, uses radioactive injected material to add contrast to areas of the brain to produce an enhanced image of the region which can show things such as tangled up blood vessels that can be the culprit.
Tags: brain called, have been, partial seizure, seizures that, symptom epilepsy, types seizures