As we all know, February 14 is Valentine's Day, but few people know that this day is also "World Epilepsy Day". In 2002, the International Anti epileptic Alliance (ILAE), the International Bureau of Epilepsy (IBE), the World Health Organization (WHO) and other departments jointly launched the global anti epileptic campaign with the theme of "getting out of the shadows and overcoming prejudice" to commemorate Valentine, a famous Italian epilepsy treatment expert with the same name as Valentine's Day. Therefore, February 14 is not just for lovers, It also belongs to a large number of epilepsy patients in the world.
Epilepsy, also known as "epilepsy" and "epilepsy" in the folk, is a sudden abnormal discharge of brain neurons, resulting in temporary brain dysfunction. If the brain is compared to the most complex computer in the world, the cerebral cortex is the CPU of the computer, and countless neurons in the cerebral cortex are like circuit components. If the computer breaks down and the local circuit is short circuited, the computer will not work properly. Civil people often regard epilepsy as a terrible disease, because patients often have ferocious faces and twitching limbs when they have seizures, but in fact, most seizures are self limiting and can soon end by themselves. Some people only have one or two attacks in their life, and everything goes as usual after the attack, which will not affect their daily life, study and work at all. Therefore, epilepsy is not terrible.
It is reported that there are more than 9 million epilepsy patients in China, with an annual growth rate of 400000-500000. Epilepsy patients suffer from serious physical and mental torture caused by diseases for a long time, and their families also suffer from tremendous psychological and economic pressure. Part of epilepsy is caused by encephalitis, cerebrovascular disease, intracranial tumor, brain trauma and other diseases, and the other part is caused by high and low blood sugar, low blood calcium, high fever and poisoning. If a certain amount of electric shock is received, almost all people will have seizures. Some of these causes can be corrected, such as abnormal blood sugar, blood calcium, high fever, poisoning, electric shock, etc. After correction, epilepsy will not occur again; Some of them will cause permanent brain damage once they occur, and secondary epilepsy will also occur repeatedly, which needs to be controlled by taking medicine. A considerable part of epilepsy cannot find its cause, which may be genetic or caused by diseases that have not been found by current scientific means.
No matter whether the cause of epilepsy can be found or not, no matter what type of epilepsy, once it is determined that it will recur and affect the patient's life, you should follow the doctor's instructions to take medicine. As long as you can take medicine on time according to the doctor's advice, epilepsy can be well controlled and will no longer affect your daily life. Therefore, epilepsy is not terrible. I'm afraid that some people will be afraid of the side effects after taking epilepsy drugs, so they will be smart enough to reduce and stop taking drugs, or even go to find a quack doctor to write some folk prescriptions. As a result, epilepsy will become more and more serious and difficult to control. Now some people, in order to make people feel that their medicine is effective, have mixed anti epileptic western medicine ingredients. The western medicine mixed in is often several and excessive, and its side effects are often greater, and it is difficult to evaluate. Therefore, patients with epilepsy must go to a regular hospital and take medicine carefully according to the guidance of the specialist, otherwise, the consequences will be unimaginable.
Although most epilepsy will not cause intellectual and mental damage to patients, there are also some intractable epilepsy patients with repeated seizures who have serious brain damage, which can be combined with mental retardation and mental disorder. This part of epilepsy is often difficult to control and needs to be combined with a variety of antiepileptic drugs, or even surgical treatment. In fact, most epilepsy patients can control their seizures well with only one antiepileptic drug. Therefore, do not listen to rumors and go to surgery casually.
When epilepsy patients have seizures, especially when the whole body is tonic clonus, the family next to them must pay attention to protect the patients from falling, and can use gauze to wrap tongue depressors and other things into the mouth to prevent tongue bites. Never put your finger into the mouth of a patient who is convulsing. The patient's strong biting force may break the finger. At this time, it is generally invalid to press people, and do not fill the patient's mouth with drugs at random - it may cause aspiration and suffocation. Observe the patient's condition after the convulsion stops, and then send to the hospital for further treatment.
Although most epileptic seizures are not terrible, there is one kind of epileptic seizures that should also be paid attention to and sent to the hospital in time for rescue treatment, that is, status epilepticus. This kind of epilepsy can not stop after the seizure. If it lasts for more than 5 minutes, you should call 120 immediately and send it to the hospital for rescue. Because the unstoppable epilepsy will cause asphyxia and cerebral hypoxia, and the impairment of brain function may be irreversible. At this time, the earlier you come to the hospital to stop the seizure, the better the prognosis will be. Therefore, epilepsy is a controllable and curable disease, and the key is to treat it according to the doctor's advice, instead of going to the doctor at random.
(Liu Jingjing, Department of Neurology, Beijing Shijitan Hospital)
