There are about 140 thousand adults and children diagnosed with epilepsy in Kazakhstan. March 26 is celebrated worldwide as Purple Day, which aims to draw public attention to this disease.
“Purple Day” in 2008 was invented by a Canadian schoolgirl who suffered from epilepsy from an early age and managed to feel the negative attitude of her peers and adults. According to the WHO, epilepsy affects about 1% of the world’s population, which is 70 million people.
-The disease can occur at any age, it can be provoked by various reasons, for example, falls, blows, injuries, if the blow falls on the area of the brain, which may be responsible for the occurrence of an attack. Convulsive seizures cause some brain formations, vascular formations, stroke, – says Makhmut MIRZAKHMETOV, neurologist, neurophysiologist of the neurosurgery department of the National Hospital of the Presidential Administration in Almaty. – The diagnosis of the disease has stepped far forward. There are “sleep laboratories” where the patient is electroencelographed (EEG) for several days, trying to identify the focus of epilepsy. The examination technique itself is quite complex, epileptologists and neurophysiologists are engaged in this.
The disease is subject to drug treatment. Also, the doctors of the national hospital performed several successful operations using the method of electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve or VNS therapy.
– The main thing, at the first signs of the disease (convulsive seizures, both mild and severe, with loss of consciousness, bending of the body), to consult an epileptologist in time. There is no need to go to medicines, healers, fortune tellers, this is a loss of time, the condition may worsen. Each attack is the death of brain cells, the specialist warns.
If a person has an attack in a public place, how to help him?
First of all, it is necessary to protect him from injury as much as possible – put him on his side, turn his head on his side and put something soft under his head. Do not touch the tongue, the likelihood of its sinking in this position is leveled. And – call an ambulance. More often, the attack ends in the interval from 1 to 5 minutes, but it can be longer.
