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Query: UMLS:C0036572 (seizures)
 80,221 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Prenatal screening can already detect some late onset diseases such as Huntington's Disease and eventually will detect even more such diseases. Aborting a fetus with minor or moderately serious genetic indications which become apparent in later life poses serious moral concerns. Women who have undergone prenatal screening tend to base decisions about aborting a fetus on severity of the genetic defect, the probability of its occurrence, and the age of onset of the condition. Parents would rather not bring suffering into the world. Yet even humans born in good health do not escape suffering. Society is moving toward a preference for infants who, at the physical level, are perfect, but does not consider other levels of human existence. Almost everyone considers selective abortion of a fetus with a grave defect which would manifest early and cause a life of severe suffering is acceptable. Yet some people with varying degrees of suffering lead very creative and rewarding lives, e.g., the talented Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, had a seizure disorder. He experienced a high feeling of bliss prior to a seizure. Another example is the famous artist, Toulouse-Lautrec, who was born with a normal body but, due to 2 accidents which broke his legs, his legs did not develop and he suffered greatly. Huntington's Disease, a severe disease lasting about 10 years and involving personality changes, jerky movements, paranoia, dementia, inability to think cognitively, and eventual death, shows up between the ages of 30-50. The 1st 30-50 years of life have the potential to be fulfilling. Besides normal people can also suffer and experience dementia in old age. Parents may not even live long enough to see the suffering and certainly are not as burdened as parents of children with early onset diseases. Thus abortion for Huntington's Disease is almost unjustifiable.
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PMID:Huntington's disease: prenatal screening for late onset disease. 833 37

The relationship between dominant hemisphere seizure activity and aphasia is unclear. Although speech arrest, expressive speech problems, and comprehension difficulties have often been associated with temporal lobe seizure activity, neologistic, paraphasic speech is rare. We report a patient with seizures following encephalitis who had recurrent episodes of fluent, severely aphasic speech with impaired comprehension which correlated with continuous, high voltage spike and slow wave activity in the left temporal region. During a several-day period of intermittent electrographic seizure activity, he had fluctuating receptive aphasia, and he developed transient paranoid psychosis following treatment. We discuss the behavioral manifestations of his left temporal seizures and correlate the changing nature of his behavior with therapeutic interventions. This case, as well as a review of others, suggests that paroxysmal fluent aphasia results from a partially treated electrographic seizure focus in the dominant temporal lobe.
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PMID:Recurrent fluent aphasia associated with a seizure focus. 161 66

In a 53-year old male suffering from paretic neurosyphilis, SPECT-investigations were performed before and after treatment with high doses of Penicillin G. The patient was admitted for disturbances of speech and concentration, memory disorder and tonic-clonic seizures. Mental examination showed a mild dysphoria and irritability in mood, but no disturbance of orientation, no euphoria or expansive delusions, and no paranoia. Mini-Mental-State examination was within the normal range (28 points); no abnormalities were found on neurologic examination, and CT and MRI investigations showed normal findings. The diagnosis was verified by CSF-examination (pleocytosis, elevated protein, positive Lues reactions). SPECT investigation with Tc 99m HMPAO (20 mCi, single-head rotating camera) revealed a pronounced bilateral parieto-temporal uptake deficiency as observed in patients with dementia of Alzheimer's type. After 18 months the clinical symptoms had remitted, and laboratory findings were improved. On the other hand, the bilateral parieto-temporal uptake deficiency in SPECT remained unchanged. Possible causes of these findings are discussed in relation to neuropathologic findings. It can be concluded that bilateral parieto-temporal uptake deficiency in SPECT is a nonspecific finding and that there is no correlation between clinical improvement and SPECT pattern in paretic neurosyphilis.
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PMID:[Lack of specificity of single photon emission computerized tomography in dementia--results of a case of progressive paralysis]. 163 20

The toxicities of cocaine are far-ranging. They include sudden death, acute medical and psychiatric illness, infectious complications, reproductive disturbances, trauma, criminal activities and societal disruption, including child neglect and abuse and lost job productivity. This chapter focuses on the medical complications. Medical complications in general reflect the intense sympathomimetic activities of cocaine ('sympathetic neural storm'). Psychiatric complications include acute anxiety or panic and paranoid psychosis. Cardiovascular complications include arrhythmias and sudden death, acute myocardial infarction, myocarditis, dissecting aneurysm and bowel infarction. Neurological complications include seizure, intracerebral haemorrhage and brain injury due to hyperthermia and/or seizures, and headache. The incidence of medical complications has been estimated using two databases collected prospectively in the United States. In 1989 and 1990 cocaine ranked first in total encounters, major medical complications and drug-related deaths. An attempt was made to assess the intrinsic toxicity of cocaine by computing the incidence of adverse health outcomes per population of drug abusers. Rates of emergency department visits and deaths were 15.1 and 0.5 respectively, per 1000 persons using drugs in the past year. The magnitude of the cocaine problem, while considerable, is relatively small compared with that of cigarette smoking or alcohol abuse.
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PMID:How toxic is cocaine? 163 9

In recent years there are a considerable increase in alcohol consumption in Taiwan, which may have been accompanied by increased incidence of alcohol-related physical disease. This study was designed for an understanding of neurological problems in chronic alcoholic patients. One hundred and five cases of chronic alcoholics with neurological problems were collected. All had taken more than 100 g alcohol daily for more than 8 years. They were all males, with a mean age of 47.0 +/- 1.3 years, mean daily alcohol consumption of 185.1 +/- 9.0 g (mean +/- S.E.). These chronic alcoholic patients showed various neurological problems. Patients showing typical clinical features of alcoholic neurological disease are now rather rare. Most of the patients had manifestations of more than one problems: polyneuropathy (74.3%), alcoholic tremor (37.1%), hallucinosis (30.5%), myopathy (26.7%), head injury (24.8%), withdrawal seizures (18.1%), Wernicke encephalopathy (15.2%), paranoia (13.3%), and stroke (15.2%). Furthermore, we divided all the patients into 5 categories, they were: encephalopathy, 59 cases (56.2%); stroke, 16 cases (15.2%); cerebellar degeneration, 12 cases (11.4%); neuropathy, 78 case (74.3%); and myopathy, 28 cases (16.7%). The daily alcohol consumption and duration of daily drinking were different significantly (p less than 0.05) among five different syndrome categories.
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PMID:Neurological problems in chronic alcoholics. 165 33

Five male patients participated in a pilot open-label study of dose-related aspects of response to intracerebroventricular bethanechol in Alzheimer's disease. No patient had remission of symptoms, but three patients improved symptomatically and on tests of memory. Improvement was evident over a restricted range of doses for each subject, and symptoms were worse at doses below and above the optimal range. There was little overlap in the range of doses producing improvement among these three. Two patients had no consistent improvement in memory, and agitation, depression, paranoia, and seizures developed during treatment. Qualitative differences and variability in dosages producing responses complicate the identification of true drug response in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
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PMID:Intracerebroventricular bethanechol for Alzheimer's disease. Variable dose-related responses. 197 38

In an earlier project, we identified five alcohol-consumption aftereffect factors, which were named Hangover, Euphoria, Flushing, Seizures, and Sleepiness. In this study (N = 100) we assessed the construct validities of the five, using 47 MMPI, self-report, and recidivism criteria. The number of significant relationships between the factors and the criteria substantially exceeded chance. The Hangover factor related to social maladjustment and to the MMPI Psychopathic Deviate, Paranoia, Psychasthenia, Hypomania, and Masculinity-Femininity scales. The Euphoria factor was associated with a high number of job losses, but a low incidence of certain physical sequelae. The Flushing factor was associated with high consumption, late development of alcoholism, many physical complaints, and older age. The Seizure factor correlated with high consumption, facial puffiness, tremors, and lack of defensiveness on the MMPI. The Sleepiness factor was associated with a good prognosis and several mild MMPI elevations. These findings suggest that the factors may provide the basis for a useful alcoholism subtyping system and that additional research on them should prove fruitful.
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PMID:The construct validity of an aftereffect-based subtyping system for alcoholics. 221 56

There are clear temporal developmental stages in drug use beginning with cigarettes and alcohol, then progressing to marijuana and finally cocaine, hallucinogens, and other drugs. Of considerable interest is the decline in prevalence of marijuana use and the stabilization of alcohol use in the face of a rise in the incidence of cocaine use. This decline occurs in the face of a decrease in the age of first initiation into drug use. Cocaine use is accompanied by serious medical, psychological, and social consequences including seizures, depression, paranoia, and suspension from school. These findings have definite implications for designing treatment and prevention programs. Inpatient and outpatient programs must require abstinence from drug use. Dysfunctional development, poor interpersonal skills, learning deficits, and concurrent psychiatric illness must be addressed. Family involvement in treatment is mandatory. Every chemically dependent person has a significant impact on the lives of several other people. The social pressures model is the most recent approach to drug prevention and the one most likely to succeed. Direct informational appeals to adolescents are unlikely in themselves to produce immediate changes in drug-related behavior but may assist in gradually changing community norms. School prevention programs need to be designed to target adolescents before the onset of drug use. The seventh grade or before is the correct point to begin. Finally, methods to assess the success of such pilot programs can greatly assist future development efforts. More research into the biologic and behavioral consequences of current drug use patterns including marijuana, cocaine, and hallucinogens is greatly needed.
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PMID:Adolescent drug abuse. Diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. 353 16

This report reviewed 996 emergency room visits and 279 hospital admissions of patients with complications of cocaine abuse seen at the San Francisco General Hospital between 1979 and 1986. In 143 cases, acute neurologic or psychiatric symptoms were the primary complaint, and case-notes provided sufficient detail for analysis. The major neurologic complications included one or more seizures (n = 29), focal neurologic symptoms or signs (12), headache (10), and transient loss of consciousness (six). Psychiatric disturbances included agitation, anxiety, or depression (33), psychosis and paranoia (24), and suicidal ideation (18). The most serious consequences were found in patients with prolonged seizures or strokes, those who jumped out of buildings, and those who attempted suicide by overdosing with other drugs. There was no correlation between the appearance of complications and the reported route of administration, the amount of cocaine used, or prior experience with cocaine. The number of patients who are seeking hospital attention for these or related complaints appears to be rising substantially. Cocaine abuse, regardless of the use pattern, is associated with a variety of potentially severe neurologic and psychiatric complications.
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PMID:Acute neurologic and psychiatric complications associated with cocaine abuse. 367 91

Preoperative variables from a full range of medical specialties were used to predict degree of seizure relief from cortical resection surgery as treatment for epilepsy in 100 patients. General, seizure history, electroencephalographic (EEG), radiological, surgical, and psychological/neuropsychological data were considered. The patients were divided into one large predictive group (n = 75) and a smaller independent cross-validation sample (n = 25). Eight predictive variables emerged: single EEG focus; anterior-midtemporal lobe discharges; discharges only from the side of surgery; rate of occurrence of discharges in surgical area; Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Digit Symbol subtest; Marching Test, preferred hand, time; Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Hysteria scale score; and MMPI Paranoia scale score. By use of multivariate procedures, increased predictability of surgical outcome was obtained not only with the predictive group but with the independent cross-validation sample. The results demonstrate that predictions of seizure relief from epilepsy surgery can be made with 80% accuracy using multiple, rather than single, predictors.
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PMID:Multidisciplinary prediction of seizure relief from cortical resection surgery. 374 Aug 13


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