Brief overview
- Signs: Loss of consciousness, staring gaze, relaxation, uncontrolled muscle twitching
- Treatment: First aid measures such as stable lateral position and securing the child during the seizure. If an illness or other disorder is causing the seizures, the cause will be treated.
- Causes and risk factors: fever, metabolic disorders, infections of the central nervous system, traumatic brain injury, tumors
- Diagnostics: Clarification of whether, for example, fever, infection, metabolic disorders exist; electroencephalography (EEG) measures brain activity
- Prognosis and course: No brain damage with brief seizures, but possibly due to the causative disease
- Prevention: Antiepileptic drugs in case of a tendency to seizures due to a disease
What is a seizure in a child?
During a seizure, abnormal electrical activity suddenly spreads through the brain. This causes the child to lose consciousness, twitch uncontrollably and become unresponsive for a period of time. In most cases, a child or baby only convulses briefly and without consequential damage. Nevertheless, such a seizure is often very threatening.
How does a seizure manifest itself?
A seizure manifests itself in children and babies through these signs:
- Sudden loss of consciousness: the child loses contact and no longer reacts.
- Sudden fainting
- Or: lightning-like, rhythmic “nodding” with the head, tearing the arms apart, rhythmic arm or leg twitching
- Fixed gaze or twisting of the eyes, squinting
- Changes in breathing (pauses in breathing, rattling breathing)
- Greyish-bluish skin color
- Mostly a so-called “after-sleep” or “exhaustion sleep”
What to do in the event of a seizure?
In the event of a seizure, the top priority is to remain calm and react calmly. These are first aid measures in the event of a seizure:
- Move the child out of a possible danger zone, if necessary lay them on the floor, re-pad them.
- Do not hold twitching limbs, as injuries are possible.
- Calm the child.
- Observe the course of the seizure as closely as possible, look at the clock and check how long the seizure lasts. This information is important for the doctor and the treatment.
- After the seizure is over: place the child in the recovery position.
- Call the emergency doctor as soon as possible.
- Calm the child, keep them warm and do not leave them alone until the emergency doctor arrives.
- If the child feels very warm, a febrile convulsion or infection is suspected. Calf compresses or cold compresses will reduce the fever.
Further treatment
What are the causes of a seizure?
There are a number of possible causes that trigger a seizure in a child or baby. These include:
- Fever (febrile seizure)
- Infections of the central nervous system such as inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) and meninges (meningitis)
- Poisoning
- Craniocerebral trauma
- Metabolic disorders (e.g. hypoglycaemia in diabetes mellitus)
- Brain tumor
How is a seizure diagnosed?
After a seizure, the child is physically examined. The doctor measures the body temperature and the oxygen content in the blood. Blood and urine cultures provide evidence of an infection.
To determine the cause of a seizure, doctors carry out an electroencephalography (EEG), among other things. This involves sensors on the scalp measuring brain waves and detecting abnormal electrical activity in the brain.
Possible metabolic disorders can be detected by determining blood sugar (glucose), calcium, magnesium, sodium and other substances in the blood.
A computer tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan detects malformations of the brain, bleeding or tumors.
What happens after a seizure?
How can a seizure be prevented?
A seizure has many possible causes. The first seizure usually occurs suddenly. If it turns out that the child is prone to seizures due to an illness, for example, special medication known as antiepileptic drugs are used in some cases to prevent seizures.
In many, but not all children, the tendency to seizures disappears in the course of their lives. In adults, seizures can be triggered by epilepsy in particular, but also by other illnesses. Read more about this topic in the article “Seizures”.
