Neurology and Mental Health Flashcards
Define Somatisation.
Communication of emotional distress, troubled relationships, and personal predicaments through bodily symptoms.
What are the signs and symptoms of somatisation?
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Recurrent abdominal pain (peak age 9yo) → sharp and colicky
- Affects 10% of school-aged children
- Majority of cases have no organic cause
- Apley’s rule → “the further the pain from the umbilicus, the more likely the pain is of an organic nature”
- Recurrent headaches (peak age 12yo)
- Limb pain
- Aching muscles
- Fatigue
- Neurological symptoms (>12yo)
What are the appropriate investigations for somatisation?
Diagnosis of exclusion
- Full physical examination
- Full, detailed history (especially social) → school, friends and family, timeline of pain
- Can be done alone (no parents)
- Reports from school can be useful
What is the management of somatisation?
- 1st line
- Promote communication between family and child (and school if necessary)
- Pain-coping skills → i.e. relaxation techniques
- 2nd line (if 1st line fails or serious family dysfunction / impaired general functioning)
- Referral to CAMHS
What is a breath-holding attack?
Toddler is upset/angry/frustrated → cries and holds breath → goes blue, lose consciousness and goes limp
- Attacks resolve spontaneously
- Drug therapy unhelpful - manage with behaviour modification and distraction
What is a reflex anoxic seizure?
Episodes due to cardiac asystole due to vagal inhibition → child becomes pale and falls to floor ± general tonic clonic fitting → brief seizure and rapid recovery
- Triggers = pain, head trauma, cold food, fright, fever
Define Febrile Convulsion.
A seizure and fever in the absence of intracranial infection → 6m to 3yo - shouldn’t occur in older children
What are the signs and symptoms of febrile convulsion?
Brief, generalised tonic-clonic seizure on background of fever
What are the chances of epilepsy following a febrile convulsion?
- Simple febrile seizure = No brain damage → No increases risk of epilepsy
- Complex febrile seizures → focal, >15 minutes, repeated in same illness = Increased risk 4-12% of subsequent epilepsy
What are the appropriate investigations following a seizure?
- Identify any cause - if indicated
- Screen for meningitis/encephalitis
- Urine MC&S if infection source unclear
- Blood glucose
- Temperature - febrile convulsion
What is the management immediately after a febrile seizure?
- Admission for
- First febrile seizure
- <18 months old
- Diagnostic uncertainty surrounding the cause
- Complex febrile / Status epilepticus
- Currently on Abx
- Parental Education
- Not the same as epilepsy
- Simple = no further risk of epilepsy
- Complex = slightly increased risk of epilepsy
- 33-50% will have another febrile convulsion
- If recurrent = educate on how to give medication
- Continue routine immunisations
- Regular paracetamol and ibuprofen
- Do not try and cool the child
- Adequate fluid intake
- Seek advice if prolonged fever
- Not the same as epilepsy
Define Epilepsy.
A disease characterised by an enduring predisposition to generate epileptic seizures and by the neurobiological, cognitive, psychological and social consequences of the condition.
Define Seizure.
Transient occurrence of signs or symptoms due to abnormal excessive or synchronous activity in the brain.
- Focal / Partial = start in one part of the brain
- Generalised = more distributed, affect both hemispheres of the brain
What are the risk factors for epilepsy?
- Genetic predisposition
- Perinatal asphyxia
- Metabolic disorders
- Trauma
- Structural CNS abnormalities
- Complex febrile seizures
What is important to classify during a seizure?
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Where seizures begin in the brain
- Focal
- Generalised
- Focal to bilateral
- Unknown
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Level of awareness
- Focal aware (awareness intact)
- Focal impaired
- Awareness unknown (unwitnessed)
- Generalised (presumed to affect awareness)
-
Other features of seizure
- Focal onset:
- Motor onset → twitching, jerking, stiffening, automatisms
- Non-motor → cognitive, emotional, sensory
- Generalised onset:
- Motor → tonic (stiffening) and clonic (jerking) = “Grand Mal”
- Non-motor → absence, brief changes in awareness ± automatic/repeated movements
- Focal onset:
What are the signs and symptoms of absence seizures?
- Brief impairment of consciousness - 5-10 seconds
- Behavioural arrest or staring → interrupts normal activity
What are the signs and symptoms of tonic-clonic seizures?
- Patient falls unconscious ± Preceding aura
- Violent muscle contractions and shaking
- Eyes may roll back
- Tongue biting
- Incontinence
- Post-ictal phenomena
What are the signs and symptoms of myoclonic seizures?
- Brief arrhythmic muscular jerking movements
- Last a few seconds, sudden jerking or twitching
What is Benign Rolandic epilepsy?
- Seizures of face / upper limbs during sleep with hypersalivation and speech arrest → AKA Sylvian seizures
- Affects children aged 3-12yo seizures – outgrown at end of puberty
- Most common childhood epilepsy
What is Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy?
- Seizures usually involving neck, shoulders, upper arms, most occur after waking up
- Begin around puberty - 12-18yo
What is Progressive myoclonic epilepsy?
- Rare syndromes that combines myoclonic and tonic-clonic
- Patient deteriorates over time
What is the management of epilepsy?
- MDT management - paediatrician, neurologist, epilepsy nurse, school nurse, GP
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Referral to Neurologist after 1st fit - for advice
- How to recognise a seizure
- Video record future seizure
- Avoid dangerous activities (i.e. swimming)
- Seek help if another seizure before referral
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Appropriate Antiepileptic Drug Choice
- Not all children will require antiepileptics - risk vs reward
-
Appropriate AED for seizure and epilepsy type - some make the seizures worse
- Lamotrigine → exacerbate myoclonic seizures
- Carbamazepine → exacerbate absence seizures
- Monotherapy at lowest dose
-
Rescue therapy for prolonged epileptic seizures (convulsive with loss of consciousness >5 minutes)
- Buccal midazolam
- AED therapy may be discontinued after 2 years free of seizures
- Generalised
- Tonic-Clonic = Valproate
- 2nd line = lamotrigine, carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine
- Absence = Valproate or Ethosuximide
- 2nd line = lamotrigine
- Myoclonic = Valproate
- 2nd line = levetiracetam, topiramate
- Tonic-Clonic = Valproate
- Focal = Carbamazepine or Lamotrigine
- 2nd line = levetiracetam, oxcarbazepine, valproate
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Intractable epileptics
- Ketogenic diets
- Vagal nerve stimulation
- Surgery → if well-localised structural cause
What are the sides effects of valproate?
- Weight gain
- Hair loss
- Rare idiosyncratic liver failure
What are the sides effects of carbamazepine?
- Rash
- Neutropoenia
- Hyponatraemia (SIADH)
- Ataxia
- Inducer
What are the sides effects of lamotrigine?
Steven-Johnson syndrome
What are the sides effects of levetiracetam?
Sedation - rare
Define Status Epilepticus.
- 1 epileptic seizure lasting >5 minutes
- ≥2 seizures within a 5-minute period without the person returning to normal between them
- 1 febrile seizure lasting >30 minutes
What is the management of status epilepticus?
- High-flow oxygen and Glucose
- 5 mins = IV Lorazepam or buccal Midazolam or recatl Diazepam
- 15 mins = IV Lorazepam + Call for senior help + Prepare Phenytoin
- 25 mins = ICU advice + Phenytoin (if already on = phenobarbitone) + Consider rectal Paraldehyde
- 45 mins = Rapid Sequence Induction of Anaesthesia with Thiopental/Thiopentone
What are the signs and symptoms of an extradural haemorrhage?
- Lucid interval followed by deterioration of consciousness and seizures
- Potential focal neurological signs
- Dilatation of ipsilateral pupil
- Paresis of contralateral limb
- Anaemia
- Shock
What are the signs and symptoms of skull fracture?
Associated with tear of middle meningeal artery
- Battle sign
- Racoon eyes
What are the appropriate investigations for a suspected extradural haemorrhage?
CT Head
What is the management of an extradural haemorrhage?
- Fluid resuscitation → correct hypovolemia
- Evacuation of haematoma and arrest bleeding = Neurosurgery
What are the signs and symptoms of subdural haemorrhage?
- Gradually decreasing GCS
- No lucid interval → just gradually decreasing
- Potential retinal haemorrhages
What is associated with subdural haemorrhage?
Characteristically NAI with shaking of a baby or direct trauma
What are the signs and symptoms of subarachnoid haemorrhage?
- Acute onset head pain
- Neck stiffness
- Fever
- Seizures or coma
- Rare in children → causes is often aneurysm or AVM
What are the appropriate investigations for suspected subarachnoid haemorrhage?
- Head CT
- Avoid LP → increased ICP