First Aid Measure When a Child Develops Seizures

Have you ever come across a situation where you suddenly see your child fitting but you panicked and become blank-minded, not knowing what to do? A child can develop fits or seizures or convulsion due to a wide variety of causes. These include seizures due to high fever in children aged from 3 months old to 6 years of age, infections involving the brain, metabolic disturbances e.g. electrolyte imbalance or hypoglycemia (abnormally low levels of sugar in the blood), trauma etc. In other words, if your child develops seizure, it does not necessarily mean that he/she has epilepsy.

Needless to say, you will need to bring your child to a nearby family doctor for medical advice to find out the likely cause of your child developing seizures. However, more often than not, medical help is not immediately nearby and watching your loved ones fitting away but not knowing how to help is quite distressing to the parents. Described below is a step-by-step guide of what to do next time in the event of seeing someone fitting.

First and foremost, do not yourself become panic. Calm down and reassure yourself that you can and need to handle this situation. Quickly take a look at the time so that you can note down the duration of the seizure. Then bring the child to a safe place e.g. away from the stairs.

Secondly turn the child onto his/her left side and ensure that the head lies no higher than the body. This will ensure that no saliva or secretions from the mouth enters into the child's lung should he/she become momentarily unconscious. Otherwise aspiration of these secretions can result in aspiration pneumonia. In the mean time, observe the general features of the seizures. Features to look out for include up rolling of eyeballs, presence of cyanotic features (i.e. lips or fingers turning blue), biting of tongue, urinary or fecal incontinence (i.e. loss of voluntary control resulting in the passing of urine or feces).

At the same time, you should also observe how the seizure occurs. For example, did the upper limbs and/or lower limbs of your child first become tense before progressing to shaking or jerky movements of both hand and legs? If so, did the jerky movements start on the upper limb first and only then later progress to involve the lower limbs? Or did the jerky movements start on the right hand and then later progress to the right leg?

There are various patterns of seizure which can occur and describing this piece of information together with the duration the whole episode of seizure lasted are vital in aiding the doctors to come to a diagnosis. Finally, after the seizure has ended, observe if the child appears drowsy for prolonged periods or remains sleepy long after the seizure has ended.

One particular aspect in which there may be differing views is whether one should insert any objects into the mouth of the child when he/she is fitting? The answer to this question is definitely not unless it is a soft object such as a thick cloth wrap around a spoon or something like a mouthpiece device. There are 2 reasons for not inserting any object into the mouth. Firstly you are likely to cause more injury to the child's mouth should he/she bite on the object and secondly there is a high chance of yourself getting bitten when you try to insert any object into the mouth.

Finally, for some parents with a child suffering from epilepsy, in addition to being familiar on how to handle such situations, they are sometimes given a drug which is use to abort seizures in an epileptic child by inserting the drug up into the anus. This drug only serves to stop any ongoing seizure and do not prevent future episodes of seizure. They shouldn't be used more than twice and should the child continue to fit after administering two doses of the drug, the child needs medical attention immediately. So the next time, if you see someone fitting (even it is an adult), the least you can do is by following the above steps. After that contact the paramedics or doctors and provide them with the information that they need. A small deed like this goes a long way in helping the medical staff as well as the patient.