I'm Simon Lang and welcome back to the podcast.

So we're back with one of our more traditional podcasts on a specific evidence-based topic.

And this time it's epilepsy and in particular status epilepticus.

So we're going to be running through a bit about what it actually is.

A bit about the traditional management of status.

Talk a bit about some guidelines that exist,

some evidence-based that underpins some of the management of status, and also talk a little bit more about the pathophysiology and different phases of seizures.

We'll then wrap up with actually the difference that this might make to our practice of seizures

in the emergency department. So with most patients that attend the emergency department,

their seizure has already terminated by the time they hit our doors.

That may be because they've been given pre-hospital benzodiazepines.

In some cases they might have been given benzodiazepines by their family,

or in the vast majority of them, they've actually self-terminated. But from time to time,

we'll get a patient coming into our emergency department who's continuing to fit. These patients

are acutely unwell, and they need their seizures dealing with in a rapid and

effective manner. We all need to be singing from the same hymn sheet and be providing really

rapid, effective care to terminate these seizures and support the patients while we're trying to

terminate it and also in their post-seizure

management. It's easy to presume with epileptics that the reason that they're having such

prolonged seizures is because they're non-compliant with their medication. But actually, that

would be a false assumption. 5 to 10% of epileptics will have intractable epilepsy

despite really good compliance with pharmacological treatment.

...