Seizures: Medical Causes and Management - Paperback

by Norman Delanty (Editor)

Seizures are frightening events. They frighten the patients who experience them; they frighten those who witness them; they also frighten many physicians who have to deal with them. Most individuals with seizures present to family physicians or to emergency room physicians. However, despite the fact that seizures are among the most common neurological conditions, most general practitioners, family practice specialists, and intemists do not see large numbers of patients with seizures. Given the apoplectic appearance of generalized tonic clonic convulsions, it is not difficult to understand why they arouse such emotional responses in those that experience them, those that witness them, and those whose care is sought for them. Seizures are symptoms of something wrong with the brain. Many different kinds of perturbations in brain anatomy, chemistry, or physiology can produce seizures. For many individuals, seizures occur in the context of an acute illness and will not recur once that illness is treated. These individuals do not have epilepsy. They have transient disturbances in brain function attributable to systemic medical conditions. It is important to recognize these issues, because, first, the seizure may be the initial, or even only, manifestation of the underlying medical problem and this needs to be recognized.

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Although seizures are among the most common medical conditions, the literature on their medical causes and their management is often chaotic, fragmentary, and widely dispersed among a variety of medical specialties. In Seizures: Medical Causes and Management, Norman Delanty addresses this problem by bringing together an authoritative panel of practicing physicians to describe the circumstances under which seizures develop in a broad spectrum of conditions, how to recognize their potentially life-threatening complications, and how they may be effectively treated within their disease contexts. Comprehensive discussions cover seizures caused by organ failure, electrolyte imbalance, and endocrine disorders, and range to those associated with cardiorespiratory disorders, hypertension, and organ transplantation. The authors also fully review seizures caused by fever and systemic infection, medication, alcohol, illicit drug use, and environmental toxins, as well as seizures in cancer patients. Further chapters examine such important topics as seizure in the intensive care unit, symptomatic status elipticus, differential diagnosis between seizure and syncope, and the use of anticonvulsants in systemically sick patients.
Broad ranging and relevant across many medical specialties, Seizures: Medical Causes and Management illuminates for today's neurologist, primary care physician, and specialist in a wide variety of medical disorders the causes and optimal management of seizures, creating along the way a "must have" reference for almost anyone practicing medicine.