How epilepsy affects children in child development

Children with epilepsy, as we have seen over recent days, have a higher risk of developing some type of disruption or problems in their cognitive abilities. Therefore, we think it is interesting, before talking about the different types of treatments that can be found, how it affects childhood epilepsy in children's development.
We all know that infancy is an important time that brain connections that allow us to acquire new learning, so that the occurrence of any of the different types of childhood epilepsy can disrupt and compromise cognitive processes, triggering that small can get to learning problems, school failure and / or inappropriate behavior in the environment.
However, we must always keep in mind that each child is different and not all cases of epilepsy will present with these difficulties; It may be a child without any problem, or cognitive or emotional, or may have different types of alterations as consequences of the crisis.
There are three main factors that make children with epilepsy appear more committed their cognitive performance: the consequences are derived from the epilepsy itself, disruptions that could occur before the onset of epileptic seizures and possible side effects of the medication.
Most children with epilepsy often have cognitive abilities within the normal, albeit it is more common to present a somewhat lower intellectual capacity in relation to children without any problems. But more important than intellectual ability is the presence of some kind of disturbance at the level of attention, speed of information processing, memory, motor skills and language (these are the most affected areas in cases of childhood epilepsy).
Attention problems is one of the most common disorders in childhood epilepsy, both by the actual disease itself as medication is used to prevent seizures. Likewise, the memory is also impaired in these children, showing more difficulty remembering recent information, making it difficult for the child to acquire new learning properly.
The motor skills of these children is usually represented by a slower response to the various actions you can take, greatly increasing reaction time, and the language is also altered, as they speak much more slowly than usual, and as slow to articulate the different phonemes. On the other hand, only in serious cases appear significant language impairments, such as dysphasia.
Importantly, the risk of an epileptic child has problems in their cognitive development is closely related to a number of factors that act in a joint manner. The first of these factors is the origin of epilepsy, since those who have a known cause are at greater risk of producing some kind of impairment.
Other factors that influence cognitive impairment in childhood epilepsy is age, with those that appear early which cause greater damage, among several things that the formation of connections is more affected or because the occurrence of crises You can make small have to miss for a long time to the school environment.
The duration of the disease also affects, because the longer it lasts the more likely that some kind of disturbance or cognitive impairment appears because a larger part of the brain is injured, needing to turn more intensive treatment also influences.
The frequency and type of crisis are two of the factors that are also involved in the possible cognitive impairment. Generalized seizures and complex crises tend to cause greater damage; Likewise, the greater the number of crisis, the greater the risk of problems arising in the development of cognitive abilities.
Finally, the location of the epileptic focus influences the cognitive development of children, with those located in the most common frontal lobe (in the front of the brain) of partial epilepsies.
A controversial factor is the drug treatment of childhood epilepsy since, although medications will improve the quality of life of children with this disease, which is the first measure of therapeutic action to control the crisis has very directly related to an increased risk of difficulties and cognitive impairments.
This is because these drugs have a sedative effect on the nervous system of the child, thereby compromising certain cognitive processes (especially those related to attention and memory). However, currently being investigated to make antiepileptic drugs, administering them in controlled and appropriate levels, reduce the risk of altering the cognitive abilities of the child. The thing to remember is that regardless of the drug, dose influences the risk of deterioration.
We have already seen how it affects childhood epilepsy in children's development, so we can move on to talk soon about the different types of treatment. However, we must emphasize that the treatment is only truly effective when you take into account the interaction of personal and social factors.