Assignment 9: Reflection

• How does the book or article fit into your potential research? What does it add to your paper or ideas?
• Was the source helpful to you? Does the source relate to your potential topic?
• How and where can you use this source in your potential research project?
• Make as many notes as you can so that you can come back to the source much later in the process without having to reread the document in its entirety.

The article that I read gave background and treatment information on febrile seizure. Febrile seizures are commonly seen in infants (and occasionally children as old as five years old) experiencing a fever. Unlike most seizures, these have no lasting negative effects on the child and often times the child only experiences one seizure, and febrile seizures only turn into epilepsy approximately 2-7% of the time. Febrile seizures can be classified as simple or complex. A child that suffers from one seizure only when they are sick with a fever would be diagnosed with simple febrile seizures. These seizures are only observed on one occasion and are less than 10 minutes in length. These have an extremely low mortality rate and are rarely treated by medical professionals as they tend to never appear again. Complex febrile seizures (or simple febrile seizures plus) are those that become more regular after the first occurrence and last more than 10 minutes. Although the mortality rate is still extremely low, these are more often treated because of their re-occurrence. In both cases, hospitalization is rarely necessary as the body generally responds to regulate the seizure before the hospital can do anything else. Typically an EEG is done to follow up in complex seizure cases.

I am considering writing my research paper on seizures and epilepsy so this information was very valuable. Although I have seen a few seizures and had some background information about them, this article greatly extended my knowledge and added to my understanding. Seizures are extremely complex and not entirely understood at this point, but febrile seizures are slightly more understood than most types. Because of this, I can use this information throughout my research paper as I begin introducing my readers to more of the complex types of seizures.