Most frequent causes of symptomatic epileptic seizures

1. Big picture

A symptomatic epileptic seizure means a seizure that occurs because the brain is being irritated by an identifiable cause. In exams, the most important point is to separate:

1. Acute symptomatic / provoked seizure A seizure occurring during an acute insult, for example fever, hypoglycemia, hyponatremia, alcohol withdrawal, acute stroke, encephalitis, trauma. This is not automatically epilepsy.

2. Remote symptomatic epilepsy / secondary epilepsy Recurrent unprovoked seizures caused by a previous or ongoing brain lesion, for example old stroke scar, traumatic brain injury, cortical malformation, hippocampal sclerosis, brain tumor. This **is epilep