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Febrile Seizures
What Causes Febrile Seizures in Small Children?
By Melinda Copp
"Febrile seizure is an exclusion diagnosis," Dr. Toporoff says. "You have to rule out the really bad things and look at what's left."
Once the more serious seizure causes are ruled out, the doctor will examine your little one to see what caused the fever in the first place. In most cases, fevers that result in febrile seizures are caused by viral or bacterial infections.
Febrile seizures can be prevented with anti-seizure medications, but doing so is not practical in most cases. Seizure medications have many side effects that outweigh the risks of febrile seizures, and oftentimes, a child will only have one febrile seizure in his lifetime. Plus, febrile seizures are not usually harmful – they don't result in brain damage, more seizures or problems with learning later in life – so prevention is not practical except in special cases.
"Febrile seizures are more scary than they are dangerous," Dr. Shubin says. If your child has one of these convulsions, you should take him or her to the doctor. But the pediatrician will likely be more interested in diagnosing the disease that caused the fever than worried about the seizure itself.
As a parent, you should keep a cool head when it comes to febrile seizures. They come on quickly, so there's no way to prepare. And even though they are alarming, they are harmless.
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