Febrile seizure

What it is

A seizure is a clinical event in which there is a sudden disturbance of neurological function caused by an abnormal or excessive neuronal discharge, and seizures may be epileptic or non-epileptic. A febrile seizure is a seizure accompanied by a fever in the absence of intracranial infection due to bacterial meningitis or viral encephalitis, and it sits in the non-epileptic group with metabolic causes, head trauma, meningitis or encephalitis, and poisons or toxins. The age of febrile convulsion is 6 months and 5 years.

Causes and risk

There is a genetic factor: a 10% risk if the child has a first-degree relative with febrile seizures. One source states that approximately 2% to 5% of children will experience a febrile seizure during their lifetimes, and gives the ages there as 3 months to 5 years rather than 6 months to 5 years.

The exanthem that carries it

Among the common childhood infections with exanthems, one has febrile seizures written among its complications, and it is roseola.

Roseola: the prodrome is URI symptoms with high fever that then breaks; there is no enanthem; and the exanthem comes as the fever falls rapidly, a fine macular rash on the trunk that spreads to the extremities. Its complication is febrile seizures.

The others in that table carry other complications, and none of them carries this one: measles gives otitis media, pneumonia, encephalitis and subacute sclerosing panencephalitis; rubella gives congenital rubella, teratogenic; mumps gives encephalitis, orchitis and pancreatitis; varicella gives superinfection, zoster, pneumonia, hepatitis, encephalitis and congenital varicella; fifth disease gives aplastic anemia; and scarlet fever gives acute rheumatic fever and glomerulonephritis. So a child whose fever falls and who then has a fine macular rash is the one in whom the seizure belongs to the illness itself.