Grand Mal Seizures & Brain Damage = Connection

Brain injury has been called a major trigger for grand mal seizures. The injury can be of any scale, whether mild, moderate and severe. Our brain functions through the electrical signals that are produced by the various nerves in different parts of the body. The nerves fire charges that go from one cell to the other. The brain injury ransacks the nervous system. It leads to the production of erratic electrical activity in the brain. This is the cause of grand mal seizure.

How Soon does Grand Mal Seizures Occur After Brain Injury?

There is no set time span for the grand mal seizures to occur followed by a brain injury. It can occur to persons of all ages. But children run a higher risk of developing it after a brain injury compared to adults. The onset of a seizure within the first seven days after the injury is called early onset seizure. The late onset seizure occurs after the first week of the brain injury. Early onset seizure increases the intracranial pressure inside the brain that can lead to further damage. Such cases should be attended to with urgent importance.

How is Grand Mal Seizures Diagnosed?

Grand mal seizures has explicit symptoms for diagnosing it. The person under grand mal seizure would show violent convulsions and lose consciousness. But to ratify clinically, doctors recommend ECG (electroencephalogram). But ECG done at a time when the symptoms have subsided would not show the abnormality in the brain. Therefore, the patient is kept under 24-hour continuous ECG. In many hospitals the patient is kept under video tape to monitor his activities and juxtapose it with the ECG tracings. Along with it the doctor takes into account the the symptoms noticed by the patient’s family to confirm a case of grand mal seizure.

Final Words on Grand Mal Seizures after Brain Injury

I hope this article on grand mal seizure caused by brain injury was useful in highlighting  that in case minor symptoms of grand mal seizures was noticed in anyone followed by an injury in the brain , a doctor should be reported immediately.