Pediatric Epilepsy Specialists

Are you unsure whether your infant is experiencing epileptic seizures? Depending on the origin of the seizures, there are a variety of signs and symptoms. Seizures in children sometimes occur due to your child being ill, having a high fever, drug side effects or injury.

What are signs of seizures in babies and children?

Child Seizures and Symptoms

• Absence Seizures: your child may seem to be daydreaming and unresponsive to touch, followed by being immediately alert. This can happen multiple times in a day.
• Juvenile Myoclonic Seizures: your child is conscious while their body experiences bodily jerks that could include part or all of their body.
• Atonic Seizures: your child may go limp and fall, lose muscle tone, have their eyelids droop and head nod and even have body jerking. After 15 seconds to several minutes, your child will immediately become conscious.
• Tonic-Clonic Seizures: These seizures begin with your child losing consciousness and can include groaning, clenching their teeth, having saliva drip from their mouth, with sweating and increased heart rate. During that time they may stop breathing. This is followed by rhythmic jerking and possible loss of bowels. Usually afterward children are lethargic, confused or even depressed.
• Neonatal Seizures: These are seizures that are within the first 28 days of a newborn’s life. They are usually short and can include repetitive movements, not breathing, and any signs from the above seizure types.
• Simple Partial Seizures: These seizures are characterized by your child being alert and remembering the events. They include motor seizures (repetitive movement), sensory seizures (hallucinating sight, sound, or feelings) autonomic seizures (sweating, increased breathing, goose pimples) and psychic seizures (problems speaking or remembering).
• Complex Partial Seizures: These typically start with a warning feeling such as fear or nausea. They progress into a variety of signs such as yelling, running, thrashing, staring, confusion, and loss of memory before and after the event.

Generally, first-time seizures do not last longer than a few minutes and then the emergency element is over and you take your child to an emergency room yourself. However, if the seizure lasts longer than 3- 5 minutes, your child is turning blue or having difficulty breathing, or there is bleeding or injury, than call 911 and get immediate medical attention.

When to see a neurologist specializing in seizures

If any of the above rings true for you, and your child’s pediatrician suspects a movement disorder, you’ll want to talk with a pediatric epilepsy specialist, such as our epilepsy specialists here at NSPC. Due to the nature of seizures and the age of your child, epilepsy in kids is hard to diagnose. Your record and notes of what happened during an episode are crucial for an accurate diagnosis.

How can an epilepsy specialist doctor help you?

Are you constantly anxious, wondering when the next seizure your child has will happen? Are you going from doctor to doctor in search of answers and a solution? Here at NSPC in New York, our world-class movement disorder center with our team of neurologists specializing in seizures are here to help you. We have the expertise and offer state-of-the-art surgical options from fellowship-trained pediatric neurosurgeons.