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Febrile Seizures
What Causes Febrile Seizures in Small Children?
By Melinda Copp
The emergency room was the last place Christine Guidry expected to spend her Christmas Eve with her 2-week-old daughter, but when her new baby started seizing that was exactly where they ended up.
"The convulsions started in the car and they lasted on and off for about 10 minutes," says Guidry, who lives in Washingtonville, N.Y. "We happened to be near her doctor's office and they were still open so we raced her in. They told us not to take chances and bring her to the local emergency room."
After an airlift from one hospital to another, three days in the hospital and a battery of tests, they diagnosed the episode as a febrile seizure – mysterious convulsions in small children and infants caused by an abrupt change in body temperature. Febrile seizures can last for only a few minutes to upwards of 15 minutes or longer in rare cases. And just because they happen once doesn't mean they'll ever happen again, which was the case for Guidry's daughter.
"They never figured out what caused it, and it never happened again," Guidry says.
Fortunately, these seizures are more frightening than they are dangerous. But they raise a number of questions: What caused the seizure? Will your child have seizure problems later in life? And is there anything you can do to prevent them?
Febrile seizures are brought on by an abrupt or rapid change in body temperature.
"Everyone has a seizure threshold in their brain," says Dr. Charles Shubin, the director of Pediatrics for Mercy Medical Center Family Care in Baltimore, Md. If an infection or inflammation causes an abrupt rise in temperature, that threshold can be compromised and you can experience a seizure. A genetic predisposition, or genetically low seizure threshold, can put a child more at risk for febrile seizures.
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