Investigations by Courvoisier, Fournel, Ducrot, Kolsky, and Koetschet in 1953 had shown that chlorpromazine reduces convulsions in mice after coramine and in rabbits after nicotine Therefore, the drug seemed to suggest itself as an anticonvulsant in epilepsy But in 1954 Bente and Itil, De Castro and Brard, and Mayr and Lechner observed activation of the electroencephalogram (E.E.G.) in epilepsy...

Chvostek's sign (CS) was investigated in 154 patients with seizures (epilepsy, n = 91; non-epileptic event, n = 41; febrile convulsion, n = 19; hypocalcaemic seizure, n = 3). Patients with febrile convulsions or non-epileptic seizures had either negative or mild CS. Marked CS was only found among those with the diagnosis of epilepsy or hypocalcaemia. Normocalcaemic patients had no other signs o...

Convulsions and loss of consciousness can be caused by, among other things, arrhythmias, conduction disorders or epilepsy. In clinical practice it can be difficult to distinguish between these causes of syncope, even for well-trained specialists. Patients with cardiac syncope have a substantial risk of subsequent sudden death. We present a patient with previously unknown noncompaction cardiomyo...

BACKGROUND Few large-scale studies of epilepsy have been done in sub-Saharan Africa. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of, treatment gap in, and possible risk factors for active convulsive epilepsy in Kenyan people aged 6 years or older living in a rural area. METHODS We undertook a three-phase screening survey of 151,408 individuals followed by a nested community case-control study. Treatm...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the use of whole brain voxel based morphometry (VBM) and stereological analysis to study brain morphology in patients with medically intractable temporal lobe epilepsy; and to determine the relation between side, duration, and age of onset of temporal lobe epilepsy, history of childhood febrile convulsions, and grey matter structure. METHODS Three dimensional magneti...

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by recurring seizures. It is physiologically characterized by abnormal, excessive and self-terminating discharges from neurons. Epilepsy affects more than 0.5 % of the world's population and has a large genetic component. The most common human genetic epilepsies display a complex pattern of inheritance and the identity of the susceptibility gene...

In a prospective study 44 children, aged 6 months to 5 years, admitted to hospital with febrile convulsions or epilepsy, were treated with diazepam in solution administered rectally during 59 generalised attacks. Rectal administration of diazepam was effective in the acute treatment of convulsions in 80% of cases. In 10% the treatment failed, whereas diazepam administered intravenously had prom...