Patient's question:
The child has facial and lip twitching and drooling while sleeping at night. It's fine for a while, but after examination, it was said to be due to calcium deficiency and needs to be supplemented. Please ask if the twitching during sleep in children is due to calcium deficiency or epilepsy?Doctor's answer:
The forms of epilepsy, except for petit mal and bilateral severe myoclonus, any type of epilepsy can occur. Focal meningeoencephalitis of the frontal pole often causes tonic-clonic seizures without warning; lesions in the frontal central region commonly cause contralateral motor or sensory focal seizures; temporal lobe lesions cause psychomotor seizures, while occipital lobe lesions are often associated with visual auras. The seizure types of most patients are relatively stable, while a few may change. In early and middle-stage epilepsy, approximately 25% of patients may experience spontaneous remission and cessation within 2 years or slightly longer. However, late-stage epilepsy tends to worsen, potentially evolving from focal seizures to generalized seizures, and severe cases may also manifest as memory impairment, personality disorders, or intellectual disability.Recommendation: The diagnosis of epilepsy is generally based on an electroencephalogram (EEG): EEG is an important auxiliary diagnostic tool for epilepsy. With the use of multiple provocation methods, special electrodes, long-term or video-EEG, the positive rate exceeds 80%. It may show spike-wave complexes or burst rhythms, which are significant for localizing focal epilepsy. However, 1-3% of normal individuals may exhibit epileptic discharges, and a considerable number of patients in the interictal period have normal EEG results. Therefore, EEG alone should not be used to diagnose or rule out epilepsy.