Diagnosis and Differential Diagnosis POSITIVE DIAGNOSIS History Taking “Careful and detailed history taking remains the cornerstone of accurate diagnosis” (O’Donohoe, 1985). History taking should be performed in a methodical and…
Epilepsy as the Presenting Manifestation of Structural Brain Lesions Although epilepsy can be caused by a host of brain lesions of congenital or acquired origin, these causes are not reviewed…
Posttraumatic Seizures and Posttraumatic Epilepsy Epilepsy develops in a small proportion of head-injured patients. Head trauma caused by street or traffic accidents is increasingly common in infancy, childhood, and adolescence,…
Stimulus-Sensitive Epilepsies Epileptic seizures are paroxysmal events, and many, if not most, are likely precipitated by known or unknown factors acting on a central nervous system (CNS) that is predisposed…
Status Epilepticus Status epilepticus (SE) is defined as “an epileptic seizure that is sufficiently prolonged or repeated at sufficiently brief intervals so as to produce an unvarying and enduring epileptic…
Occasional Seizures Other Than Febrile Convulsions Seizures precipitated by extracerebral factors, seizures resulting from acute brain insults, and single epileptic attacks, by definition, differ from epilepsy, which is a chronic…
Febrile Convulsions Febrile seizures are the prototype of occasional epileptic seizures (see Chapter 1). That young children have a high susceptibility to convulsions in a setting of acute fever has…
Epilepsy in Infants This chapter deals with convulsive disorders in the first 2 years of life, with the exception of those that occur in the neonatal period (first 28 days…
Epilepsies Characterized by Partial Seizures Focal seizure is the term proposed by the Task Force of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) to designate seizures in which the first clinical…
