CT/MRI: Epilepsy

The reason I chose this pathology is because my boyfriend's younger brother was just recently diagnosed with this. I wanted to research it and find out more information on what this actual is.

*What is Epilepsy?*

Epilepsy is a fairly common disease that affects the nervous system and occurs in about 2.5 million Americans. It is most commonly seen affecting children and teens with about 180,000 diagnosed every year.

The brain is run by electrical signals. When these signals misfire, there is a temporary communication problem between nerve cells. Some of the things that can lead to epilepsy are brain injuries, brain tumors, lack of oxygen during birth, and an infection or illness the fetus acquires during pregnancy.

*Symptoms*

The most common symptom of epilepsy is seizures, but not everyone that has seizures has epilepsy. Seizures can occur in anyone under certain conditions, but epilepsy is characterized by repeated seizures. They are typically the same type of seizure each time they occur, so the affected person will probably act similar during each one. When a seizure occurs the person can lose consciousness, become unaware of what is going on around them, or have involuntary motions, among other things. This will leave the person very weak and very tired. My boyfriend's brother has a couple different strengths of seizures. Sometimes he will be going upstairs to brush his teeth and stop halfway there. His mom will go to check on him a couple minutes later and find him standing in the hallway and she will ask him what he is doing. Most times he has no idea what he was supposed to be doing, so his mom has to remind him that he was supposed to be going to brush his teeth. Other times his seizure is stronger. This usually leaves him extremely tired and causes him to miss school for the day.

*Treatment*

There are a few ways in which doctors can treat this disease. The most common way is through medication to control seizures. The medication won't make the seizures stop, but they usually fade out or even disappear as the child gets older. Another way is to implant a Vagus Nerve Stimulator underneath the skin in the chest. A wire is run up through the neck where it attaches to the vagus nerve. This device stimulates the nerve to reduce seizure frequency and intensity. If the person has partial seizures, a third treatment is surgery to remove the part of the brain where the seizures occur.

As we are all aware, this is a T2 weighted MRI image of a normal brain.