My son is 12 years old this year. Last month, he suddenly suffered from hand and foot twitching. He went to the local hospital and got better after a drop shot, but after about 10 days, he had another twitch. Later, I took him to a large hospital in Guangzhou for examination. The doctor said it might be epilepsy. But after doing blood sampling, EEG, CT and other examinations, the doctor said that no problems were found. Excuse me, why does my son have convulsions? What disease can it be?

Answer: Li Hong, chief physician of the Pediatrics Center of Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University

Convulsion is a common clinical symptom with many causes. It is generally divided into two categories: febrile seizure and fever. According to the age characteristics of the child, the possibility of febrile convulsion is small, the child has no fever, and the possibility of nervous system infection is small. Convulsions without fever can be associated with a variety of diseases, such as epilepsy, cerebrovascular malformations, moyamoya disease, intracranial space occupying lesions or genetic metabolic diseases.

In your letter, you said that your son's EEG examination did not find any problems. It should be reminded that as an important auxiliary examination method for epilepsy diagnosis, EEG is affected not only by age, but also by genetic factors, various internal and external factors and drugs. At the same time, ordinary EEG uses electrodes placed on the scalp to elicit brain cell activity, In some cases, if the discharge position is deep, EEG may not show abnormal discharge waves. Ordinary EEG can usually only detect about 30% of epileptic discharges. Examination or multiple EEG and AEEG examinations during seizures can improve the positive rate. It is recommended that you take your child to recheck the EEG, or conduct a long-term dynamic EEG to improve the brain MR examination. At the same time, parents should pay attention to whether the child has consciousness disorder when having convulsions, the time, form, duration of convulsions, the way of relief and whether there are inducing factors. Once the patient is diagnosed with epilepsy, it is necessary to decide whether to take antiepileptic treatment according to the situation. It is suggested that you should take your child to the pediatric neurology specialist of the hospital to consult with the specialist. (Reporter Weng Shuxian, Correspondent Hu Qiongzhen)