Episode 73 Emergency Management of Pediatric Seizures

Pediatric seizures are common. So common that about 5% of all children will have a seizure by the time they’re 16 years old. If any of you have been parents of a child who suddenly starts seizing, you’ll know intimately how terrifying it can be. While most of the kids who present to the ED with a seizure will end up being diagnosed with a benign simple febrile seizure, some kids will suffer from complex febrile seizures, requiring some more thought, work-up and management, while others will have afebrile seizures which are a whole other kettle of fish. We need to know how to differentiate these entities, how to work-them up and how to manage them in the ED. At the other end of the spectrum of disease there is status epilepticus – a true emergency with a scary mortality rate - where you need to act fast and know your algorithms like the back of your hand. This topic was chosen based on a nation-wide needs assessment study conducted by TREKK (Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids), a collaborator with EM Cases. With the help of two of Canada’s Pediatric Emergency Medicine seizure experts hand picked by TREKK, Dr. Lawrence Richer and Dr. Angelo Mikrogianakis, we’ll give you the all the tools you need to approach the child who presents to the ED with seizure with the utmost confidence.