Causes of Seizures in Children

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. David Hill and today we're going to talk about causes of seizures in children. Seizures are relatively common problem among children and most of them are a result directly of fever. When a child between the ages of one and six has a fever and has a simple five minute long generalized seizure with shaking of the arms and legs; that's often relatively normal effect of the fever. Now obviously it's very alarming; but when we say normal, we mean it doesn't tend to harm the child in anyway. That said, there's certain features in seizures that are rather concerning to us. A child who doesn't have a fever at the time the seizure occurs. A fever that doesn't involve the entire body or only one part. A seizure where the child stares in the space or seems unresponsive or a seizure occurring outside of those age ranges; greater than age six or under age one. We look for in off a lot of different causes of seizure because anything that impacts the brain may cause a seizure. One of the most obvious other causes is a severe infection like a meningitis or an infection of the brain itself. So if we see a very high fever with an unusual or prolong seizure, we go looking for those things. Also a bloat to the head such as a concussion may result in a seizure. A child who becomes dehydrated or passes out for some reason may seize when blood flow to the brain gets cut off. There's always the sort of nightmare of a brain tumor and while we wish they never happen, they can happen and when we're evaluating children for seizures we certainly do things starting just for the basic physical exam; but sometimes involving in MRI or a CT to make sure that a seizure is not resulting from a brain tumor. If your child just had a seizure that is something other than the simple fibreal seizure, your doctor is going to want an excellent history; a complete neurologic exam looking at all the testable nerves of the body and probably and EEG or a CT scan. Talking about causes of fever in children, this is Dr. David Hill."