Seizures
What are Seizures?
Seizures are symptoms of a brain
problem. They happen because of sudden, abnormal excessive or
synchronous neuronal activity in the brain.
How do they look like?
Seizures can cause
involuntary changes in body movement or function, sensation,
awareness, or behavior. They are often associated with a sudden and
involuntary contraction of a group of muscles and loss of
consciousness.
Seizures can be provoked by acute hypoxemic episodes or can in
some affected individuals occur unprovoked.
Optimal oxygenation and ventilation in CCHS patients reduces the
chance for hypoxemic episodes but nevertheless in individuals with
more severe forms of CCHS seizures may progress to persistent
seizures disorder requiring anticonvulsive prophylaxis.
Neurocognitive development
Can my child achieve normal intelectual functioning ?
Most of children with CCHS attend regular classes in regular
schools. However some affected individuals have significant
learning disabilities requiring special education classes.
Normal intellectual function appears to be associated with an early
diagnosis and optimal ventilatory support.
Regular and comprehensive intelectual testing can identify the
problem and enable aggressive educational intervention that
together with optimal ventilatory management can assure
maximalization of child's neurocognitive potential with a good
quality of life.
What about his/her motor Motor developmetdevelopmental
milestones ?
It is a great chance that your child will
archieve all motor developmental milestones in time but many CCHS
infants present with lower muscular tone and/or major motor
developmental delay needing inclusion of different
neurophysiotheapeutical programs.
Vision
CCHS patients frequently exhibit
vision abnormalities reflecting neural control of eye function.
Most have narrow pupils that react poorly to light. They can also
have strabismus of various type and therefore problems with
convergence on near looking
Hearing
Some CCHS individuals can present
hearing problems. These may be related to deficits in periferal or
central neural hearing pathways. It is important to diagnose
hearing deficits early in the course of the disease to facilitate
proper speech development in CCHS children that might be influenced
by itself due to the need for the tracheostomy