Practical measures in epileptic seizures

1. Big picture

This topic is not mainly about diagnosing epilepsy or choosing long-term antiepileptic therapy. It is about what to do practically when a person is having a seizure.

For the exam, the key idea is:

During an epileptic seizure, the immediate danger is usually not the electrical discharge itself, but injury, aspiration, hypoxia, prolonged seizure/status epilepticus, and missing an acute provoking cause.

The lecture’s first practical steps are: avoid injuries and aspiration, do not leave the patient alone, arrange ambulance/hospital transport when needed, give benzodiazepine for seizure clusters, monitor breathing, and reduce temperature in febrile convulsion.