Epilepsy Treatment at CritiCare Asia Hospitals, Malad, Mumbai
Living with seizures affects everyone at home, not only the person who has them. CritiCare Asia Hospitals, Malad is a neurology hospital in Mumbai where epilepsy care is built around families and a team that stays with the patient over the years. The condition itself is neurological: sudden bursts of abnormal electrical activity in the brain cause seizures that recur. One seizure on its own does not make the diagnosis, which is considered when seizures repeat without a clear trigger or when tests suggest they will. People come for epilepsy treatment in Malad, Mumbai at every age, and the first step is always to establish what kind of seizure is happening and what lies behind it.
Types of Seizures
Not every seizure is a convulsion. What it looks like depends on the part of the brain involved.
- Focal seizures begin in one area. A person may stay aware or lose awareness, and the signs vary from a strange rising feeling or a twitching hand to staring or repeated movements such as lip-smacking.
- Generalised seizures involve both sides of the brain from the beginning. In a tonic-clonic seizure, the body stiffens, jerks and consciousness is lost. Absence seizures are short lapses of awareness that parents and teachers often take for daydreaming.
A focal seizure can spread and turn generalised. Afterwards, the person is often confused, drowsy or left with a headache.
When to Seek Evaluation
A first seizure always deserves assessment, however well the person seems afterwards. An epilepsy specialist is worth seeing if you notice:
- A child who stares blankly or stops responding for a few seconds
- Falls with no explanation, or jerks soon after waking
- Seizures that carry on despite medication taken regularly
- A change in how often episodes happen, or what they look like
Relatives are often the ones who saw it all, and many hesitate because the episodes were brief. Please come anyway. Describe what happened as precisely as you can, and bring a phone video if one exists, because it helps the epilepsy doctor a great deal.
What Causes Epilepsy
For many patients, the cause stays unknown, even after careful testing. When one is found, it tends to fall into these groups:
- Head injury
- Stroke or other damage to the brain's blood supply
- Infections of the brain, including meningitis, encephalitis and neurocysticercosis
- Tumours or structural differences in the brain
- Birth injury, developmental conditions or genetic causes
Everyday triggers can set off a seizure in someone prone to them: missed doses, short sleep, heavy alcohol and fever with infection.
How Epilepsy Is Diagnosed
There is no single confirming test. The diagnosis comes together from several pieces.
- The history, told by the patient and by anyone who saw an episode
- A neurological examination
- EEG, which records electrical activity. Because a routine EEG may look normal between seizures, longer or video-EEG monitoring is sometimes needed
- MRI, which can reveal scarring, tumours or developmental abnormalities
- Blood tests to exclude metabolic or infective causes
What the tests show about the seizure type and where it starts then guides treatment.
What to Do During a Seizure
Most seizures stop on their own within a couple of minutes. Until then, the job is to protect the person.
- Move hard or sharp objects away and cushion the head
- Roll the person onto their side once the jerking has stopped
- Check the time the seizure started
- Do not hold them down or place anything in their mouth
Call for emergency help if the seizure runs beyond five minutes, if one follows another without recovery, or if this is the person's first.
Living with Epilepsy
Good sleep, medication at the same times daily, and little alcohol count for as much as the prescription itself. Swimming alone and working at heights add risk, and driving is a matter to settle with the neurologist. Children do better when their school knows the seizure plan, and a parent who understands it feels less alone with it.
Treatment Options
Anti-seizure medication is where treatment normally starts, and a single carefully chosen drug controls seizures in many people. Seizure type, age, other health conditions, and, for women, plans for pregnancy all shape the choice. Doses are raised gradually, and stopping suddenly can bring seizures on. Review visits give the family a regular place to raise concerns about side effects or missed doses.
If seizures continue after two suitable, well-tolerated medicines, the epilepsy is called drug-resistant. Further tablets alone are less likely to help, so a fuller assessment follows. Options include a supervised ketogenic diet, which is sometimes used in children, neuromodulation and surgery.
Epilepsy surgery in Malad, Mumbai comes into consideration when seizures resist drugs and start in a part of the brain that can be treated. A presurgical evaluation comes first, locating the source of the seizures and checking that treating it will not harm speech, movement or memory. This typically involves video-EEG monitoring, MRI, PET and neuropsychological testing, and some patients need electrodes placed inside the skull. Depending on results, the choices include:
- Removal of the area producing seizures, most often in the temporal lobe
- Disconnection procedures such as corpus callosotomy or hemispherotomy, which interrupt the routes seizures travel
- Vagus nerve stimulation, an implanted device that delivers regular impulses to the brain, used where removal is not possible
Surgery is not right for everyone and does not always stop seizures, so tablets may be needed afterwards.
Epilepsy Treatment at CritiCare Asia Hospitals, Malad, Mumbai
Epilepsy is a long-term condition, and care should not change hands every time a new question arises. At CritiCare Asia Hospitals, Malad, neurologists assess the seizure type and likely cause with EEG and imaging, and the same team follows the patient through changes in medication and in life. Families are given practical guidance on triggers, safety at home and at school, and keeping up with tablets, and they are welcome to attend visits. Where medication falls short, neurosurgery and neuropsychology join the assessment. If someone in your family is having seizures, bring them to CritiCare Asia Hospitals, Malad, and speak with a neurologist in Mumbai.