Matthew was nine months old when he had his first seizure – the most terrifying thing I had ever seen in my life and it was happening to my baby. I knew nothing about epilepsy apart from that people with epilepsy tookmedicine that stopped them having seizures – but this was definitely not the case for Matthew and my education into the world of epilepsy had now begun. The seizures kept on coming...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness and viability of individual epilepsy guidelines as a user-friendly tool for carers of people with epilepsy and learning disabilities. In this paper the term carer refers to family carers and support workers. METHOD A retrospective survey questionnaire designed to ascertain the effectiveness and feasibility of individual epilepsy guidelines as a user-fri...

Yawning has been rarely described in association with seizures and not previously documented by video-EEG. We present a 48-year-old woman with a long history of non-dominant for speech hemisphere seizures and post-ictal yawning. Yawning was irresistible, forceful and often repetitive. We reviewed the few similar epileptic cases described in the literature and discussed the possible mechanisms. ...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of epilepsy among school children between the ages of 7-17 in Izmir province, in Turkey. METHODS A cross sectional study was conducted. Sample size is calculated as 4654, from the target population of 420054 students. A stratified random sampling technique was used to select the schools located in Izmir Metropolitan area. For the 13...

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is a re-emergent neuromodulation technique that consists in the external application of oscillating electrical currents that induces changes in cortical excitability. We present the case of a 16-year-old female with pharmaco-resistant juvenile myoclonic epilepsy to 3 antiepileptic's drugs characterized by 4 myoclonic and 20 absence seizures mo...

The availability of new antiepileptic drugs has broadened the spectrum of medical treatment options in epilepsy. The new agents, together with established drugs, offer substantial choice for doctors treating patients with focal or generalised epilepsy. The newer antiepileptic drugs are not necessarily more effective but usually better tolerated than the traditional agents, mainly because of fav...

Epilepsy is a chronic disorder characterized by a spontaneous tendency for recurrent seizures which affects major aspects of a patient’s life, including cognitive, behavioral, psychological and social functioning (Foldwary & Wyllie, 1999). It has been reported that cumulative lifetime risks for epilepsy and for any unprovoked seizure are 3.1% and 4.1% respectively in industrialized countries. E...

This population based study compared the prevalence, nature and management of epilepsy between primary school children in mainstream education and those attending a special educational placement (children with special needs). The overall prevalence of epilepsy was 4.3/1000, but was 30 times higher in children with special needs, many of whom also had severe physical disabilities. Seizure types ...