“Thanks to research, in most cases epilepsy can be successfully treated. Today we have countless anti-seizure drugs that guarantee us control of epilepsy in about 70% of patients. In cases where the drugs don’t work surgical treatments can also be used. Thus Giancarlo Di Gennaro, coordinator of the Epilepsy Study Group of the Italian Society of Neurology (Sin), in the sixth episode of the monthly column ‘Protect your brain, entrust yourself to the neurologist’, dedicated to neurological diseases. The project, born from the collaboration between Sin and time.news, aims to increase knowledge on neurological pathologies and on the figure of the neurologist, but also and above all to sensitize the population to rely on the care of this specialist when they appear the first symptoms.
Epilepsy, which in Italy is estimated to affect “around 600,000 people”, 6 million in Europe and around 50 million worldwide, “cannot be cured – De Gennaro points out – but in some forms of epilepsy in children the crises are resolved because they are linked at that age period. In adults, on the other hand, we consider the epilepsy resolved when there have been no more seizures for 10 years and the person has not taken drugs for 5 years”.
Generally, the disease begins to manifest itself as a child or in old age. “It is a neurological condition characterized by a predisposition over time to develop epileptic seizures – explains the neurologist who is also in charge of the Center for Epilepsy Surgery Trenta ore per la vita of the Irccs Neuromed of Pozzilli (Isernia) – The symptoms of an epileptic seizure reflect the type of epilepsy: if you have a so-called ‘focal’ seizure, in which the electric discharge is produced in a precise and limited part of the nervous system, the symptoms reflect the function that this structure has in the brain. On the other hand, there are generalized seizures that involve the whole cerebral cortex: in this case the symptoms are seizures, absences, it depends on the distribution of the electric discharge in the brain”.
But who should you contact? “It depends – replies Di Gennaro – If the person has a crisis for the first time, they must go to the emergency room, because it can be a symptom of a very serious condition. Subsequently, the figure of reference is the neurologist or child neuropsychiatry in children. If the epileptic seizure is a symptom of an onset of epilepsy, at this point the patient’s reference figure is the epileptologist neurologist”.
Diagnosis is not always easy. One of the typical symptoms of an epileptic seizure “is the loss of consciousness and awareness – the expert points out – The most important thing is the account of the clinical manifestations provided by the patient or by the observers. Then there are very useful tests, first of all the ‘electroencephalogram and magnetic resonance imaging’. There is no shortage of “forms of epilepsy where it is possible to trace a family predisposition. Hereditary forms exist, but are rare”, the neurologist points out.
Thanks to research, “in most cases, epilepsy can be successfully treated.” Today, recalls the specialist, “there are many precision treatments, the technology for the surgical aspects is very advanced; there are more effective drugs with fewer side effects and we are also recording many advances in the genetic field. So expectations are high. Furthermore, there are “is a World Health Organization project, set in motion over the next decade with the goal of bringing down the burden of epilepsy worldwide. A push is expected from this point of view to improve access to cures all over the planet and also to give input to research”.