Patient's question:
My daughter is seven years old and has been diagnosed with benign childhood epilepsy. Does epilepsy affect a child's intelligence?Doctor's answer:
Epilepsy is like this. Generally, 70% of children with epilepsy can be cured with medication. For this small group of patients, if you use medication in a timely manner, the frequency of seizures is relatively low, and it generally does not interfere with their higher-level intelligence. Only those with refractory epilepsy, who have a high recurrence rate and poor response to medication, may experience longer recurrence periods that can affect their intelligence. To put it this way, the damage that each recurrence of epilepsy does to the brain is far greater than the side effects of the medication. In the past, there was a report in the literature that each generalized seizure, which is a major convulsion, as commonly referred to by the public, causes the damage of one hundred thousand brain cells with each recurrence.