disappearing seizure symptoms

[sheryl777]

My 19 month old daughter was just diagnosed with ideopathic epilepsy with focal seizures on the right side of her brain. She had her 24 hour video EEG 5 days ago. For the last 2 months, she has had symptoms just about daily, including tics and seizure behavior (forced turning of her head to the left, rolling her eyes, and her mouth turns down, like a pout). Then suddenly, she has had NO tics or seizure behavior for the past 7 days. (She did show intermittent spikes and slow waves on her EEG 5 days ago, with lots of increased activity in her sleep).

We are supposed to start her on Keppra. However, I am hesitant to give a powerful drug to a healthy happy symptom-free child when she doesn't appear to need it.

My question is: Is it possible that her epilepsy was very temporary? Could it be gone now? I'm just so afraid that I'll be medicating her for 2 years for nothing.

She will be receiving a MRI in a few days.

I'm so confused. Should I wait to see if the seizures come back?

Thanks in advance!!!

[MG (Admin)]

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[MG (Admin)]

I think that the decision to start epilepsy treatment makes a lot of sense.
The fact that you have not seen any seizures for the last 7 days does not mean that she has not been having seizures that have gone un-noticed (e.g in her sleep or when you are not looking). It is hard to say how exactly the seizures affect a child at this age but there is a lot of good reason to assume that they are bad for the brain and for normal development and so if there is clear evidence of repeated seizures then I cannot think of a neurologist who would not advise starting treatment, even if the past week has been good. This is because there is a high likelihood of another seizure happening.

Let us know how it goes.