A Primary Care Doctor in El Cajon is accustomed to helping pediatric patients with chronic health conditions. Epilepsy is an example of a disorder that a family-care doctor helps patients manage and control. The condition causes a tendency to have recurrent seizures that range from minor to severe. Symptoms of a minor seizure might include blinking abnormally and losing awareness for a few seconds. Other children experience severe episodes in which they lose consciousness, fall and jerk spasmodically. Epilepsy is typically diagnosed during childhood.
The first time a serious seizure occurs in a child, the parents are likely to bring him to urgent care or an emergency room. Some primary care clinics have acute care centers. Doctors will order various tests to confirm a diagnosis of epilepsy or to determine whether the episode was connected with another health issue. Sometimes a child has a seizure for no apparent reason and never has another one.
If parents notice symptoms that they don’t understand but that aren’t immediately obvious as seizures, they will probably schedule an appointment with their family doctor at a facility such as Children’s Physicians in Medical Group, Inc. If that doctor suspects the child has epilepsy, he can refer the youngster to a neurologist or a specialist in epilepsy for a definitive diagnosis and recommendations for treatment.
Once a definitive diagnosis has been made, parents are typically instructed to follow up with their family care doctor or pediatrician. This doctor will spend time with them and with the child, providing information and answering questions. He helps calm their anxiety about the disorder and provides reassurance that kids with epilepsy typically live entirely normal lives.
Most youngsters have epilepsy that is easy to manage with medication. Their Primary Care Doctor in El Cajon provides prescriptions for the medication and he schedules appointments with the patients to make sure they are continuing to do well. If any patient experiences unpleasant side effects that do not dissipate, the doctor may prescribe a different drug to see if that is a better fit. Many medications are available, and people usually do not need to put up with bothersome side effects.
