Question
Is my child’s trembling epilepsy? What should I do?
Answer
Trembling is not always caused by epilepsy. There could be other reasons for a child’s trembling. First, let’s understand what trembling is. Trembling is a pathological phenomenon of the nervous system and muscles, characterized by involuntary contractions of striated muscle. Clinically, there are many manifestations, including convulsions, tonic spasms, myoclonic jerks, tremors, choreiform movements, ataxic movements, torsion spasms, fasciculations, habitual tremors, etc. Trembling is one of the main symptoms of epilepsy, but it is not exclusive to epilepsy. Other conditions can also cause trembling, such as hysterical seizures, hypocalcemic seizures, hypoglycemic convulsions, apnea attacks, sleep myoclonus, etc. These are not within the scope of epilepsy. Additionally, some types of epilepsy patients do not have trembling symptoms, such as absence seizures and temporal lobe epilepsy. Therefore, one cannot equate trembling with epilepsy.