Patient's question:
Symptom Description: Generalized twitching, increased heart rate. Past treatment history and effectiveness: This condition appeared shortly after the newborn was born. Desired help: In this case, does it belong to neonatal epilepsy?Doctor's answer:
Hello, it is a pleasure to assist you: Neonatal epilepsy refers to epilepsy that occurs within 28 days after birth. This condition has many causative factors, which are categorized into three types: prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal factors.Prenatal factors include abnormal brain development in the fetus, occlusion of fetal cerebral blood vessels, prenatal fetal infection, maternal use of hormones, anesthetics, alcohol during pregnancy leading to congenital metabolic defects in the fetus, as well as maternal illness during pregnancy and hereditary convulsions.
Perinatal factors include various birth injuries, intracranial or extracranial infection in the fetus, and accidental injection of anesthetics into the infant's scalp during difficult labor.
Postnatal factors include metabolic disorders, postnatal infection, intracranial hemorrhage, and hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, among which perinatal asphyxia and hypoxia are the most common causes, followed by metabolic abnormalities and birth injuries.
The incidence of this condition is relatively high, approximately 1.5%-3%. The first peak of onset occurs in the first three days after birth, and the second peak occurs between days 4 and 14.
Clinically, this condition is classified into four types: microseizures, clonic seizures, tonic seizures, and myoclonic seizures.
Microseizures are often asymptomatic or may manifest as one or more of the following: oral-facial-tongue movements, tonic deviation of the eyes accompanied or not accompanied by nystagmus, repetitive eyelid blinking, drooling, sucking movements, pedaling-like limb movements, or changes in respiratory rate or apnea.
Clonic seizures are characterized by rhythmic, relatively slow limb clonic convulsions.
Tonic seizures are characterized by tonic contractions of the limbs.
Myoclonic seizures are characterized by rapid, synchronous flexor convulsions of the upper and lower limbs, occurring once or multiple times.
Timely treatment should be administered after the onset of this condition, as otherwise, the prognosis will be poor.