What is benign rolandic epilepsy?

Benign rolandic epilepsy is a syndrome that starts causing seizures in children between ages 6 and 8. Benign rolandic epilepsy is the most common childhood epilepsy, accounting for 15 percent of diagnoses. The condition affects boys more often than girls.

What is the Rolandic area of the brain?

The name “Rolandic” refers to the part of the brain in which the seizures develop: the Rolandic area, or centrotemporal area. This part of your child’s brain controls their face, mouth, and throat. Children with benign Rolandic epilepsy typically experience seizures shortly after they go to bed or before they wake up.

What does Rolandic epilepsy look like?

Seizures that begin during wakefulness involve twitching, numbness, or tingling of one side of the face or tongue. These symptoms can interfere with speech and may cause drooling. The child remains fully aware. These seizures are typically brief, lasting no more than 2 minutes in most cases, and are usually infrequent.

Where is the Rolandic area?

[1] Most of the affected children usually outgrow this condition by puberty, hence the term “benign.”[2][3] The seizures originate in the Rolandic area of the brain (situated around the central sulcus of the brain, also called as centrotemporal area, located around the Rolandic fissure).

What triggers benign Rolandic seizures?

No one knows what causes benign rolandic epilepsy. Children who have close relatives with epilepsy are slightly more likely to develop the condition.

Does Rolandic epilepsy go away?

Benign rolandic epilepsy is one form of epilepsy. With this condition, seizures affect the face and sometimes the body. As a result, the disorder causes problems for some children. It almost always disappears, though, by adolescence.

Can a child have seizure while sleeping?

Children may also have convulsions during a nocturnal seizure. Most nocturnal seizures are brief and mainly occur at the beginning of the night or just before waking. Lack of sleep, stress, and certain sounds can trigger nocturnal seizures in some children.

Will a sleep study show seizures?

This records electrical activity in the brain. The EEG can record unusual spikes or waves in electrical activity patterns. Different types of seizures can be identified with these patterns. When a patient is experiencing nocturnal seizures, a sleep study is often needed to diagnose the condition.

How is Rolandic epilepsy treated?

Anti-seizure medications like carbamazepine (Tegretol), gabapentin (Neurontin), levetiracetam (Keppra), lacosamide (Vimpat) oxcarbazepine (Trileptal), or zonisamide (Zonegran) are most often prescribed to treat benign rolandic epilepsy.

How is benign rolandic epilepsy diagnosed?

How Is Benign Rolandic Epilepsy Diagnosed? Doctors diagnose the condition based on the description of the seizures, their timing, the child’s age and development, and results from an EEG test (to see brain waves/electrical activity in the brain).