Epilepsy Research Paper - Medical Assisting

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Once epilepsy is diagnosed and they find the category there are several types of treatment, from medications or surgery. Majority of the patients can control epilepsy with medications. Every type of epilepsy responds differently to medication. One medication may not have any affect and then other medications may help the seizures. Patients with generalized seizures respond better to Depakote, Lamictal, Topaman, or Zonegram. Sometimes it requires one or more medications to control the seizures. The side effect of all this medication is that it can cause damage to other organs in your body so regular blood tests are required.

What happened if the medications don't work? First they will try to retest the patients to see if they have the wrong type of seizure and that is why they are not responding to medications. If the diagnosis was correct there are different experimental medications, there is the Ketogenic diet, Vagus Nerve Stimulator and the last resort is surgery. The Ketogenic diet is a special diet that consists of primarily foods rich in fat and low in carbohydrates and proteins. When fats are digested in the body they yield ketones, ketones have a protective effect against seizure activity for unknown reasons. There are two main drawbacks of this diet there is a lot of measuring and weighing of food as well as several urine tests to see if you are producing the ketones. Also many people find this diet hard to continue.

Vagus Nerve Stimulator (VNS) requires a 2part surgical implant. One part is a wire that is wrapped around the Vagus nerve in the neck and the other part is a pacemaker like implant that is inserted under the collarbone. This devise is programmed to "fire" on demand via a magnet that may help to reduce frequency or severity of a seizure.

There are also four other types of surgeries that can be performed if nothing else works. There is the Standard temporal lobectomy, which is the focal brain resection of the epileptogenic tissue of the neocortical origins, the corpus callostomy, and the hemispherectomy. There are only two main criteria that one must possess in order to have any surgery. One the patients' seizures must all start in the same part of the brain and/or two that part of the brain cannot control any important functions such as speech, movement or sensation. The goal of surgery is to remove the part of the brain that is not functioning well and save the parts that are functioning normally.

Epilepsy and seizures are not a curse or a supernatural issue; they are medical problems just like asthma or diabetes. People with epilepsy live normal lives. Some types of epilepsy are harder to control than others but with good support staffing and medical care coping with this disease can be overcome. Other people's reaction to this might however be another task to overcome because a lot of people won’t understand.

REFERENCES

1. Http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/87/99668.htm

a. Types of Seizures and Their Symptoms

i. WebMD Medical Reference in collaboration with THE CLEVELAND CLINIC

2. Http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/87/99669.htm

a. Types of Epilepsy

i. WebMD Medical Reference in collaboration with THE CLEVELAND CLINIC

3. Http://epilepsygroup.com

a. Education information from their website under education.

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