Tests and diagnosis

Your child will usually be seen by a paediatrician (children’s doctor) after a first seizure. To help decide whether your child has epilepsy, the paediatrician will ask what happened to them during the seizure. They might ask whether you have a video recording of your child’s seizure on your mobile phone or digital camera. They will also ask about how your child felt before, during and after the seizure. They will look at their medical history and may arrange for tests to be done at a special epilepsy clinic. Tests can help show whether the seizure was due to epilepsy, or something else.

EEG

One of the most commonly performed tests is an electroencephalogram (EEG). An EEG tells doctors about the electrical activity happening in the brain. It can be very useful in showing seizures that are not obvious to an onlooker, and can also give information about specific seizure types. It only shows what is happening in the child’s brain at the time the test is being done. It’s not able to show what has already happened or what is going to happen in the future. Despite this, an EEG can sometimes be very helpful to doctors when they are diagnosing epilepsy.

Understanding EEG results, particularly in newborn and premature babies, is a specialist job. It should only be done by someone who specialises in epilepsy in babies.

CT and MRI scan

The two types of scanners commonly used to show the physical structure of the brain are the CT and MRI. The CT is a type of x-ray. The more powerful MRI uses radio waves and a magnetic field. These scans can’t show epilepsy, but can show if there is any damaged area of the brain that could cause epilepsy.

Not every child will need a CT or MRI scan.