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Can a high fever lead to convulsions?

Dr PSN Menon
Consultant & Head, Department of Pediatrics
Jaber Al-Ahmed Armed Forces Hospital, Kuwait

Q: Our son who is just eleven months old was suffering from viral fever, which was probably transferred from myself; though the fever was only 100.2F when he was playing with me and looked not so serious, but few minutes later suddenly he got hard, closed his teeth and lost his senses. Then our aunt advised us to put water in the head, after 10 minutes my son got his sense back but was jerking his body after an interval of few minutes until he had fever. The doctor here advised Calpol, Calmpose, Frisium with antibiotic Ecocef 100 DT and asked to give first three-medicines in case of fever in future, before going to the doctor. Doctor here said that this symptom would continue up to five-six years. My question is that is there any treatment so that this disease can be fully cured? If yes, what is that? And if not what precautionary measures can be taken to prevent this disease?

A:Your child has developed convulsions secondary to fever; also known as febrile seizures. This is usually a disease of infancy and childhood and likely to recur any time when the temperature rises rapidly due to any reason. It is unlikely to develop into epilepsy, the common cause of fits without any fever later in childhood. Febrile seizures generally do not lead to any significant brain damage in later infancy or childhood unless the seizures are prolonged and very frequent. The usual treatment is to prevent the occurrence of fits due to high fever by giving drugs to control rapid rise of temperature and the seizures. The usual practice is to use only one anticonvulsant, diazepam (Calmpose) along with paracetamol in adequate doses at the beginning of fever. Intermittent prophylaxis using clobazam (fresium) has become popular following a number of reports in recent literature and aggressive marketing by the drug companies. However, there is no place for the use of both diazepam and Clobazam.