What are the most serious complications associated with status epilepticus?
Acute complications result from hyperthermia, pulmonary edema, cardiac arrhythmias, and cardiovascular collapse. Long-term complications include epilepsy (20% to 40%), encephalopathy (6% to 15%), and focal neurologic deficits (9% to 11%).
How do you handle a patient with status epilepticus?
Three new preparations—fosphenytoin, rectal diazepam, and parenteral valproate—have implications for the management of status epilepticus. However, randomized controlled trials show that benzodiazepines (in particular, diazepam and lorazepam) should be the initial drug therapy in patients with status epilepticus.
Which is the most common seizure experienced by the elderly?
The most common seizure experienced by older adults (66.2%) is the complex partial seizure, which is sometimes called a temporal lobe seizure and is accompanied by impaired consciousness.
What causes sudden seizures in older adults?
Partial seizures in the elderly may produce uncontrolled shaking, alter emotions, or change the way things look, smell, feel, taste or sound to the person having the seizure. When people have these experiences, yet stay fully conscious, the episodes are called simple partial seizures.
Is status epilepticus an emergency?
A seizure that lasts longer than 5 minutes, or having more than 1 seizure within a 5 minutes period, without returning to a normal level of consciousness between episodes is called status epilepticus. This is a medical emergency that may lead to permanent brain damage or death.
Why would a 75 year old have a seizure?
The most common acquired etiologies of new-onset epilepsy and seizures in the elderly include cerebrovascular diseases, primary neuron degenerative disorders associated with cognitive impairment, intracerebral tumors, and traumatic head injury.
How serious is status epilepticus?
What percentage of status epilepticus cases result in fatality?
Unfortunately, despite their large numbers, population-based studies have yet to identify any unique clinical or diagnostic characteristics of an adult SE “survivor profile.” Usual mortality rates in adult studies range from 16% to 25%, although risk steadily increases with advancing age.
How does status epilepticus cause death?
Death or brain damage from status seizures (as opposed to death from the underlying cause) is most likely to result from: Direct damage to the brain caused by the injury that causes the seizures. Stress on the system from repeated generalized tonic clonic seizures. Injury from repeated electrical discharge in the brain …