A Guide to Seizures and Seizures Medication

Seizures are sudden electrical disturbances in the brain that can cause changes in a person's movements, behavior and feelings. There are many reasons why they occur, including high blood glucose or sodium levels, high fever, hypertension or stroke. However, the most common condition associated with seizures is epilepsy, a neurological disorder.

Living with repeated seizures can have short- and long-term effects on a patient. Bruising or fractures due to falls are the most common short-term results, while depression, anxiety and other mental health issues are the long-term consequences of dealing with the condition.

We’ll provide a full guide to seizures and seizures medication below.

How Are Seizures Treated

Treating seizures depends on the person's illness. If the root cause is cured, its symptoms, like seizures, would also disappear.

However, if the seizures are due to epilepsy, which is an incurable ailment, medication is used to manage the condition so the patient can live their life without interruptions. Aside from prescription drugs, doctors might recommend nerve stimulation, dietary changes and brain surgery for worse cases.

How Doctors Determine the Best Seizures Medication

Patients must undergo a series of tests to determine the type of seizure they are experiencing. Doctors consider the complete medical history of the patient and the events leading up to the episode.

The tests often include:

• Toxicology screening to test for drugs and toxins
• Spinal tap to rule out infection
• Blood testing to check for irregularities in electrolytes

Once the doctors get all the pertinent patient information, they can recommend the best medicine for seizures to manage the illness effectively.

The Most Commonly Prescribed Medications for Seizures

Antiepileptic Drugs (AEDs) are medications used to treat epilepsy. There are many prescription AEDs in the market, and doctors consider the age, lifestyle, type of seizure, frequency of attacks and chances of becoming pregnant when prescribing them to patients.

AEDs generally fall into two categories:

• Narrow-spectrum AEDs: Prescribed to patients with specific types of seizures. These drugs were formulated to prevent attacks that occur in a particular part of the brain regularly.
• Broad-spectrum AEDs: Given to patients with more than one type of seizure. These medications were made to prevent episodes from more than one part of the brain.

Narrow-Spectrum AEDs

Narrow-spectrum AEDs are medications given to patients who experience focal seizures, which can occur with or without loss of consciousness.

Patients experiencing focal seizures often experience an impaired sense of awareness and report feeling like they were in a dream. The person looks awake but stares into space, not responding normally to the environment. They also tend to perform repetitive movements such as walking in circles, repeating words and rubbing their hands together. Focal seizures can also exhibit heightened emotions. Patients suddenly feel angry, joyful or sad and have an altered perception of how certain things look, feel, smell, sound or taste.

The most common types of narrow-spectrum AEDs that are prescribed to manage focal seizures are the following:

Broad-Spectrum AEDs

Broad-spectrum AEDs are prescribed to patients who experience generalized seizures, which are categorized into the following subtypes:

• Absence seizure: This type is characterized by staring into space or subtle body movements like lip smacking or eye blinking.
• Tonic seizure: It causes stiffening of the back, arms and legs muscles, which may result in the patient falling to the ground.
• Atonic seizure: Often characterized by a sudden loss of muscle control, causing the patient to collapse.
• Clonic seizure: Associated with repeated, jerking muscle movements affecting the neck, face and arms.
• Myoclonic seizure: Appears as sudden twitches of the arms and legs with no loss of consciousness.
• Tonic-clonic seizure: This is considered the grandest type of epileptic seizure, which causes an abrupt loss of consciousness, shaking, body stiffening and loss of bladder control.

The most commonly prescribed generalized seizures medication include:

*only available as generic in the United States

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Sources:

• https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/symptoms/seizures
• https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/epilepsy/types-of-seizures
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2912003/
• https://www.healthline.com/health/epilepsy/medications-list#types-of-seizures
• https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seizure/symptoms-causes/syc-20365711