What happens after a seizure long term?

After the Seizure (Postictal Period)

Gradually the person regains awareness and may feel confused, exhausted, physically sore, sad or embarrassed for a few hours. The person may not remember having a seizure, and may have other memory loss.

What are the long term effects of a seizure?

People with seizures are more likely to have psychological problems, such as depression and anxiety. Problems may be a result of difficulties dealing with the condition itself as well as medication side effects.

Does my brain get permanently damaged after a seizure?

Although scientists and clinicians have long known that prolonged seizures, a condition referred to as "status epilepticus," kill brain cells, surprisingly little scientific evidence exists to support the notion that individual seizures do damage.

How long does it take your brain to recover from a seizure?

Some people recover immediately while others may take minutes to hours to feel like their usual self. The type of seizure, as well as what part of the brain the seizure impacts, affects the recovery period – how long it may last and what may occur during it.

Do seizures affect life expectancy?

Compared with the general population, patients with newly diagnosed symptomatic epilepsy have reduced life expectancy, according to an investigation published in the November 2017 issue of Epilepsia. Patients with newly diagnosed idiopathic or cryptogenic epilepsy, however, have a normal or prolonged life expectancy.

How do seizures affect you?

Can you live a normal life after a seizure?

With the right diagnosis and treatment, most patients can live a normal life. We have made great advancements in epilepsy treatment over the last 20 years with more medications, advanced diagnostic tests and more precise surgical techniques.

Do seizures get worse with age?

Does epilepsy get worse with age? If you were diagnosed with epilepsy while you were a child or a teenager, the condition is likely to eventually go away or become easier to control. That being said, it can get worse for some, while other people continue having occasional seizures for their whole lives.

Can seizures damage memory?

Any type of epileptic seizure could potentially affect your memory, either during or after a seizure. If you have lots of seizures, memory problems might happen more often. Some people have generalised seizures that affect all of the brain.

How long is a person confused after a seizure?

The postictal state is a period that begins when a seizure subsides and ends when the patient returns to baseline. It typically lasts between 5 and 30 minutes and is characterized by disorienting symptoms such as confusion, drowsiness, hypertension, headache, nausea, etc.

Do people fully recover from seizures?

Some people recover immediately while others may take minutes to hours to feel like their usual self. The type of seizure, as well as what part of the brain the seizure impacts, affects the recovery period – how long it may last and what may occur during it.

Are seizures a permanent disability?

To qualify for either SSI or SSDI, epileptic seizures have to occur regularly (see below). Because epilepsy is often controlled with medication, it is not always a disabling illness. Social Security examiners will want to see evidence that your condition is disabling even though you are taking your medication.

What kind of brain damage do seizures cause?

Seizures, particularly repetitive seizures, cause substantial brain damage in highly susceptible areas, such as parts of the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, amygdala, thalamus and other limbic structures; however, neuronal death after seizures can be more widespread and is generally quite variable (e.g., [24, 77]).

What type of seizures cause brain damage?

Status epilepticus happens when a seizure lasts for more than five minutes, or you have more than one seizure without enough time between to recover. Status epilepticus is a life-threatening medical emergency because it can cause brain damage or even death.

Can seizures change your personality?

Many people with epilepsy experience disagreeable changes in their emotions, and the link between mood disorders and epilepsy has been observed for more than 2,000 years. While this link has been noticed for many years, the relationship between seizures and mood disorders has not been well understood until recently.

Do people have mental changes after a seizure?

During a seizure.

Up to 1 in 3 people with focal seizures may feel fear as part of their seizures. After a seizure you may feel anxious or depressed for days or weeks if the parts of the brain that affect mood are recovering from the seizure. Confusion or memory loss after a seizure can also be worrying or depressing.

Do seizures reset your brain?

Epileptic seizures reset the excessive pathological entrainment occurring minutes prior to their onset and appear to play a homeostatic role of restoring the balance between synchronization and desynchronization of brain dynamics [9].

Can seizures lead to dementia?

People with epilepsy develop Alzheimer's disease at a rate 6 times higher than the non-epileptic population, and seizures can damage the memory centers of the brain and contribute to dementia.

Can seizures lower your IQ?

Children with age of seizure onset <5 years showed significantly lower IQ regardless of epilepsy classification (Berg et al., 2008) and, among surgically treated patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, intellectual impairment was more frequent in patients with seizure onset before 1 year of age (Cormack et al., 2007).

What are early warning signs of a seizure?

Does epilepsy affect intelligence?

Eight of the 72 epileptic patients (11.1%), however, had a persistent decrease in IQ of 10 points or more.

Are seizures close to death?

A seizure may cause a person to have pauses in breathing (apnea). If these pauses last too long, they can reduce the oxygen in the blood to a life-threatening level. In addition, during a convulsive seizure a person's airway sometimes may get covered or obstructed, leading to suffocation.

What is the last stage of a seizure?

Ending (post-ictal) phase

This is the recovery stage and during this phase any physical after effects of the seizure are felt. The type of seizure and the part of the brain involved will determine how long it takes for a person to return to their usual self. Some common signs of this phase include: Confusion.

Why would someone have a seizure?

Seizures can happen for many reasons; It may be from high levels of salt or sugar in your blood; brain injury from a stroke or head injury brain problems you are born with or perhaps a brain tumor. Dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease, high fever or illnesses or infections that hurt your brain.

What jobs can you not do with epilepsy?

How many seizures can you have before brain damage?

A seizure lasting more than five minutes or two or more seizures with incomplete recovery in between is an emergency. A seizure that lasts more than five minutes, or at least two seizures without full recovery in between, can cause brain damage or worse in children and newborns.