30,000 pediatric epilepsy patients can be controlled with appropriate medication
Jul 21, 2024
|
Epilepsy refers to cases in which such seizures occur more than twice at least 24 hours apart without any special trigger. Pediatric epilepsy is the occurrence of these symptoms in childhood.
Pediatric epilepsy is caused by genetic factors, premature infants, brain damage or hypoxia during delivery, brain infection, abnormalities in innate brain structure, and trauma. These causes may work in combination, but in many cases, the mechanism has not yet been clearly identified.
Epilepsy is one of the relatively common neurological diseases that appears in 0.5 to 1% of the total population, and is known to have a high incidence in childhood and adolescence and old age. According to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, 159,933 people visited the hospital last year for epilepsy, of which 30,703 children under the age of 20 accounted for 20.3%.
Professor Park Yu-jin of the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescents at the Catholic University of Korea's Incheon St. Mary's Hospital said, "If you have epilepsy, you usually try to hide it because you think it will be less intelligent or less capable of learning, but it does not have much impact on cognitive function except in special cases. Epilepsy should be understood as a disease that can be treated with accurate diagnosis, not a disease that must be hidden.", he explained.
Pediatric epilepsy differs from adult epilepsy in many ways. The most representative thing is that children get worse or heal faster than adults. This means that children develop both epilepsy that heals well and epilepsy that does not heal well. Children heal well with relatively small amounts of anticonvulsants, but there are also many epilepsy that have a bad effect on growth and development because they have more severe symptoms than adults and do not respond to drug treatment. Adults whose brains are already mature rarely have other problems with the cranial nerves due to epilepsy, but children may have problems with the development of cranial nerves themselves.
Seizures are largely divided into general seizures that begin throughout the brain and partial seizures that begin in local areas of the brain. When it comes to seizures, people usually think of major seizures in which the limbs gain strength, raise their eyes, scream, and bubble up their mouth, but in reality, partial seizures are more common. Partial seizures show symptoms such as stress in one limb, twitching only one face, and dazed expressions, such as changing one's appetite or touching one's hands as the head and eyes turn to one side. In the case of general seizures, there are general stiffness attacks in which the body stiffens and trembles, dystagmus attacks in which the body suddenly stops acting and looks blankly or drops its head, and hepatic muscular spasms that flinch like a surprise.
Park Yu-jin, a professor of pediatrics at the Catholic University of Korea's Incheon St. Mary's Hospital, said, `If a child shows symptoms of general seizures, he/she should lie on a flat surface and turn his/her head to prevent secretions such as saliva or vomit from crossing into the airways"Most stop seizures within one to two minutes, but if they last more than five minutes, you should consider visiting the emergency room. Therapy such as rubbing the limbs or picking the limbs with a needle is not very helpful in alleviating symptoms.
There are various methods of treatment, such as drug treatment, diet, and surgical treatment, but most of them prioritize drug treatment. About 70% of children and adolescents can control or cure seizures with medication. Usually, initial treatment begins with one anticonvulsant, which selects drugs known to work according to detailed diagnosis of epilepsy, starts in small amounts, gradually increases, and determines the appropriate dose according to the treatment response. Generally, when medication is started, anticonvulsants are taken for more than two to three years.
Although recently developed anticonvulsants have fewer side effects on the cerebrum, they can be used with relative confidence, but in some physically sensitive patients, long-term administration can lead to cognitive decline. It is important to closely examine whether there is a decrease in the patient's cognitive function and cerebral activity before and after administration and to select drugs that can minimize these effects.
Professor Park Yu-jin said, `In the case of childhood epilepsy, there are cases where children are not properly treated or hid their diseases due to social prejudice and misunderstanding.'"Energy is definitely not an incurable disease." If you use drugs or remove lesions, most of them can be controlled.'
|
bellho@sportschosun.com
