Patient's question:
My son is 9 years old and has had epilepsy for over 2 years. The EEG shows spikes and slow waves in the central, temporal, and occipital regions. The main characteristics of his seizures are profuse cold sweat, swallowing, and they last only a few seconds. Previously, he had facial twitching, but now the most prominent symptom is cold sweat, with his entire body sweating profusely. These episodes usually occur about an hour after falling asleep. This has been happening for half a year now.Doctor's answer:
Epilepsy is a disease caused by the paroxysmal abnormal discharge of neuronal groups in the brain due to various reasons, leading to episodic abnormalities in motor, sensory, cognitive, mental, and vegetative nerve functions. Epilepsy without a clear cause is called primary epilepsy, while epilepsy that occurs secondary to intracranial tumors, trauma, infections, parasitic diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, systemic metabolic diseases, etc., is called secondary epilepsy. The treatment mainly involves selecting drugs based on the type of seizure to control it. For epilepsy with a clear cause, in addition to effectively controlling seizures, the primary disease should be actively treated. For refractory epilepsy that does not respond to drug treatment, stereotactic surgery may be performed to destroy brain regions related to epilepsy, or procedures such as anterior corpus callosum sectioning or chronic cerebellar stimulation may be considered.