Special Types Of Seizures

There are plenty of seizure categories. The one patients are most familiar with is the category according to the location of origin. This brings such types as partial seizures, primary generalized seizures and their sub-types. But there is one category of seizures that is often not treated as seizure in the sense that it resembles epileptic symptoms but exhibits seizure-like symptoms nevertheless.

Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures
Included in the category, nonepileptic seizure, psychogenic seizures are conditions that basically root from the mind, the subconscious mental activity and not from the electrical activity of the brain as with most types of seizures. These are by nature psychological and are often not produced deliberately. In fact, patients are not aware that their symptoms are epileptic. These are usually physical manifestations of a disturbance in the psyche of the patient. However, a seizure of this type does not necessary present a serious psychological disorder.

Psychogenic seizures account for more than 20% of all cases referred to comprehensive epilepsy centers. These occur more frequently among young adults and adolescents but are also not rare among the elderly and children. Women are three times more likely to exhibit such seizures than men.

Psychogenic seizures look very much like the actual epileptic seizures. Family members of patients often describe the symptoms as identical with grand mal or tonic-clonic seizure as well as complex partial seizure. Physicians rarely have the chance of observing psychogenic seizures attack themselves so often, epilepsy is diagnosed. It could take years for a correct diagnosis to be given.

Diagnosis can be made using video-EEG monitoring in which the doctor will deliberately stimulate the patient to trigger the seizure. Family members of the patient will then be asked to describe whether the symptoms shown by the patient in experiment are similar with those happening in actual attacks. A diagnosis can be completed once all seizure type conditions are ruled out and when the condition presented by the patient confirms the common symptoms seen among psychogenic seizure patients.

This type of seizure, although not really as serious as tonic-clonic and other advance forms of seizures, still need treatment. Counseling, medication, and other therapies may be applicable although sometimes, the symptoms go away once the patient recognizes that the symptoms are psychological.

Refractory Seizures
This is a catch-all term for all types of seizures that cannot be controlled using any type of treatment.

Current data suggest that epilepsy can be controlled using anti-epileptic drugs or AEDs. Most of these drugs are focused on suppressing and controlling the occurrence of seizures. Since epilepsy is yet to be fully understood, it only makes sense that some of the current treatment methods are not yet effective. This results in a significant number of cases whose treatments are not available. Under this category falls all case of seizures that either do not respond to currently available treatments or are too exposed to adverse side effects.

Imitators Of Seizure
There is a wide range of health conditions whose symptoms imitate those of seizure. These include breath-holding spells, migraines, movement disorders, gastrointestinal reflux, and other nonepileptic seizures.