Epilepsy

• Focal Onset Aware Seizures: When a person is awake and aware during a seizure, it’s called a focal aware seizure. This used             to be called a simple partial seizure.
• Focal Onset Impaired Awareness: When a person is confused or their awareness is affected in some way during a focal seizure, it’s called a focal impaired awareness seizure. This used to be called a complex partial seizure.

 Unknown Onset Seizures:
When the beginning of a seizure is not known, it’s now called an unknown onset seizure. A seizure could also be called an unknown onset if it’s not witnessed or seen by anyone, for example when seizures happen at night or in a person who lives alone.
As more information is learned, an unknown onset seizure may later be diagnosed as a focal or generalized seizure.

How are different symptoms during a seizure described?
Many different symptoms happen during a seizure. This new classification separates them simply into groups that involve movement.

For generalized onset seizures:
Motor symptoms may include sustained rhythmical jerking movements (clonic), muscles becoming weak or limp (atonic), muscles becoming tense or rigid (tonic), brief muscle twitching (myoclonus), or epileptic spasms (body flexes and extends repeatedly).
Non-motor symptoms are usually called absence seizures. These can be typical or atypical absence seizures (staring spells). Absence seizures can also have brief twitches (myoclonus) that can affect a specific part of the body or just the eyelids.

For focal onset seizures:
Motor symptoms may also include jerking (clonic), muscles becoming limp or weak (atonic), tense or rigid muscles (tonic), brief muscle twitching (myoclonus), or epileptic spasms. There may also be automatisms or repeated automatic movements, like clapping or rubbing of hands, lip-smacking or chewing, or running.
Non-motor symptoms: Examples of symptoms that don’t affect movement could be changes in sensation, emotions, thinking or cognition, autonomic functions (such as gastrointestinal sensations, waves of heat or cold, goosebumps, heart racing, etc.), or lack of movement (called behavior arrest).

For unknown onset seizures:
Motor seizures are described as either tonic-clonic or epileptic spasms.
Non-motor seizures usually include a behavior arrest. This means that movement stops – the person may just stare and not make any other movements.

What if I don’t know what type of seizures I or my loved one have?

It’s not unusual that a person doesn’t know the type of seizure they have. Often seizures are diagnosed based on descriptions of what an observer has seen. These descriptions may not be complete. When seizures are difficult to diagnose or seizure medicines are not working to stop seizures, talk to your doctor or treating health-care provider. Seeing an epilepsy specialist or having an evaluation at an epilepsy center can help you explore other treatment options, such as surgery, devices, dietary therapy, new or add-on seizure medications, or a clinical trial.

An appointment with a neurologist or epilepsy specialist may be needed. An MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan to look at the brain and EEG (electroencephalogram) tests to record the electrical activity of the brain can be very helpful tools in diagnosing types of seizures and epilepsy properly.
Keep asking questions so you get the right tests and right treatment for your type of seizures and epilepsy.

When a disorder is defined by a characteristic group of features that usually occur together, it is called a syndrome. These features may include symptoms, which are problems that the person will notice. They also may include signs, which are things that the doctor will find during the examination or with laboratory tests. Doctors and other health care professionals often use syndromes to describe a person’s epilepsy.