Complications of epilepsy

Many people may not be familiar with epilepsy in their daily lives. In fact, this disease is very likely to cause many complications after it occurs. Once these complications occur, they will affect the patient's daily life. The patient will often experience symptoms such as fainting and migraine. These symptoms will last for a very long time. When they become serious, the vision of some patients will be affected, causing blurred vision.

(A) Syncope is characterized by a sudden, brief, reversible loss of consciousness accompanied by a decrease or disappearance of postural muscle tone, caused by a sudden decrease in global cerebral blood perfusion and returning to normal as cerebral blood flow is restored. The disease is triggered by mental stress, painful stimulation, etc., and may have a long prodromal symptom, which is more common when standing or sitting. The skin is pale, there is no confusion and automatism after the attack, no convulsions accompanied by urinary incontinence and tongue biting, and the EEG is normal between attacks.

(II) Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) are more common in young women. There are often people around when an attack occurs. It often occurs after mental stimulation. The onset is relatively slow and the forms of the attack are varied and changeable. The patient keeps shouting and twitching, with strong self-expression and exaggerated movements. There are rarely falls, tongue bites or urinary incontinence. The patient may fall to the ground suddenly. The twitching is often unilateral, with both flexion and extension. The movements are often not synchronized and coordinated, and there are often tremor-like movements.

They can resist passive movement and may respond to external stimuli. Their eyelids are tightly closed, their eyeballs move around, their pupils are normal, they have a light reflex, and their face is red or pale. This may last for several hours and they need comfort or suggestion to relieve. After the attack, everything is back to normal, there are few complaints of discomfort, and there are few abnormalities in the EEG.

(III) Migraine: This disease lasts for a long time and is often accompanied by flashes, dark spots, hemianopsia, blurred vision, severe headache, nausea and vomiting, and rarely impaired consciousness. It lasts for a long time, several hours or days, and there is no mental memory disorder.

Transient ischemic attacks (TIA) are often clinically manifested by neurological deficits, such as hemiplegia, hemianopsia, and hemisensory hypoesthesia, while epileptic seizures are often irritative symptoms, such as convulsions. TIA is more common in middle-aged and elderly people with risk factors for cerebrovascular disease.

Sleep disorders include narcolepsy, sleep apnea, night terrors, sleepwalking, nightmares, rapid eye movement behavior disorder, etc. It often occurs during sleep or during the sleep-wake transition. During an attack, consciousness is often unclear, and the attack content includes movement, behavior, etc.

Since many types of epileptic seizures can easily occur during sleep and also show certain movement and consciousness disorders, such as tonic-clonic seizures and certain seizures originating from the frontal lobe during sleep, sleep disorders can easily be misdiagnosed as epileptic seizures. Sleep disorders often occur during non-rapid eye movement sleep stages III, IV and rapid eye movement sleep, while epileptic seizures often occur during non-rapid eye movement sleep stages I and II. Video-somnography is the most reliable method for differentiating between sleep disorders and epileptic seizures.