Q: Does a family history of epilepsy increase the chances of a child developing epilepsy?
Epilepsy is a disorder that commonly begins during childhood. About 50 percent of all individuals with epilepsy in Arizona are under 18 years of age. The Epilepsy Foundation of Arizona estimates that 6,100 children in Arizona have epilepsy. About 1,800 of those children have intractable, or difficult to relieve, seizures that require specialized care beyond common epilepsy medications, https://discoverdentalhouston.com/ativan-lorazepam/. Intractable seizures can limit a child’s social life and prohibit activities like bike riding, swimming and driving. A family history does increase the chances of developing epilepsy, but only by a small amount, according to Jeffrey Buchhalter, M.D., Ph.D., pediatric epileptologist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Risks differ depending on the number of family members with epilepsy, their relationship to the child and type of seizures, according to Buchhalter, who transferred to Phoenix Children’s from the Mayo Clinic at Rochester last year to launch a comprehensive pediatric epilepsy program within the hospital’s Center for Neuroscience and Behavioral Medicine.
Parents should watch for signs of usual types of seizures, including staring, unresponsiveness or uncontrollable shaking of one or more parts of the body, says Buchhalter. “Another indication of subtle seizures is decline in school function or developmental decline.”
The epilepsy program at Phoenix Children’s includes a new Pediatric Epilepsy Monitoring Unit and a nursing staff specially trained in pediatric epilepsy, says Buchhalter. “In addition to standard anti-epileptogenic drugs, our program provides alternatives for intractable seizures such as the ketogenic (high fat) diet, vagus nerve stimulator (similar to a pacemaker for the brain) and epilepsy surgery.”
