Dr. Liang Zhili, Deputy Director of Neurosurgery and Director of Epilepsy Treatment Center of the First Affiliated Hospital of PLA General Hospital

Doudou, a 5-year-old girl, is smart and cute. Since the second half of last year, Grandma found that Doudou was sometimes stunned by food, and her spoon would suddenly fall to the ground. Sometimes she stirred the bowl with a spoon, scattering it all over the table. At first, Grandma didn't care. During a meal in February this year, Doudou suddenly froze, and the spoon fell to the ground again. A few seconds later, her eyes were tilted to one side, her mouth twitched, and she urinated in her pants. No abnormality was found in the local hospital. Later, Doudou experienced similar situations for many times. At the beginning of April, Doudou's parents took Doudou to the First Affiliated Hospital of the PLA General Hospital for treatment. Doctors diagnosed him as symptomatic epilepsy, complex partial seizures, and right temporal base cortex dysplasia.

There are many clinical manifestations of epilepsy, such as sudden loss of consciousness, falling to the ground, limbs twitching, foaming at the mouth, etc., which are the most familiar typical symptoms of epilepsy. But not all patients will have such typical symptoms, such as Doudou, who often appears sudden stupor, movement stop (such as dropping a spoon, toy, pen, etc.), and unconscious repetitive movements (such as stirring a spoon in a bowl), which are early symptoms of epilepsy. During the attack, the patient will become unconscious for several seconds and do not know what happened. Later, the patient will continue the original action. Others are auditory hallucinations, hallucinations, involuntary repetition of the same action, such as sucking, chewing, swallowing, rubbing hands, undressing, dazed, holding up a circle in the air, sometimes inexplicably laughing. Due to the limited expression ability of children, these subtle movements are often ignored by parents. Some parents even scold and beat these strange phenomena as children's bad habits. They go to the hospital for examination only when they have convulsive symptoms, and often miss the best opportunity for early treatment.

The manifestations of epilepsy are various, and some atypical special symptoms are common in children. Although these symptoms have various manifestations, they all have four common characteristics, namely, abruptness, repetition, transience and sameness. In daily life, if parents find that their children often have some repeated abnormal actions and symptoms, they should consider that it may be epilepsy, and they must go to the regular hospital for examination in time to receive treatment as soon as possible. Liang said that because children with epilepsy are in the period of growth and development, the earlier epilepsy treatment, the smaller brain damage, the smaller the impact on children's intelligence, and most patients can be controlled after scientific and formal treatment. Article/Zhang Xianhuai