Adjusting Seizure Action Plans With Age

"Things change. A seizure action play is not something that you are required to visit only once a year. Seizure patterns change. Seizure types, seizure frequencies change. It is important to see your provider if these sorts of things change.”

The differences in seizure action plans (SAPs) for children as compared to adults with epilepsy can be staggering. Oftentimes children will have their SAP developed shortly after birth and must maintain and update them as a requirement for parts of schooling. Children can struggle with fully understanding their condition, how their seizures can evolve, and what to do during an emergency setting.

For adults, though, they may have left their parents for a job or educational reasons and now live alone. The lack of resources or caregivers at the disposal for adult with epilepsy can definitely raise the need for a more constructed SAP, according to Orrin Devinsky, MD. Devinsky, the director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone, along with other epilepsy specialists, feel as though the important question when developing an SAP is “who is around?”

In efforts to raise awareness about SAPs as part of the inaugural SAP Awareness Week, NeurologyLive hosted a roundtable discussion that included Devinsky, along with Scott Perry, MD, co-director, Jane and John Justin Neurosciences Center, Cook Children’s Hospital, and Tracy Salazar, PhD, executive director, Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS) Foundation.

In the fourth segment, the panel discussed the differences in seizure action plans as a child enters adulthood, the need for constant adjusting and monitoring, and why the resources around a patient with epilepsy will help tailor their SAP going forward.