A focus on seizures after Jett Travolta's death

From USA Today:

Parents and doctors of children prone to seizures say they live in fear of the tragedy that has befallen 16-year-old Jett Travolta (pictured with his Dad). The son of actors John Travolta and Kelly Preston died Friday after apparently suffering a seizure at the family's vacation home in the Bahamas.

"This is the terror that we live with," says Jeffrey Buchhalter, a pediatric epilepsy specialist with Phoenix Children's Hospital.

An autopsy is set to be conducted Monday. Jett had a long history of frequent seizures, Travolta family attorney Michael McDermott told the Associated Press.

USA TODAY asked experts to explain the causes and treatments of seizures.

Q. What are seizures?

A. Seizures are electrical storms in the brain, caused when brain cells — which normally communicate in a tightly controlled way — all begin firing at once, says Wendy Wright, a neurologist at Emory University in Atlanta.

Although some seizures last just a few moments, more serious episodes can last many minutes and can be life-threatening, Buchhalter says. Repeated seizures also can lead to brain damage.

Q. What causes seizures?

A. Medication can trigger an individual seizure, Wright says. Doctors consider anyone with multiple, unexplained seizures to have epilepsy, a catch-all diagnosis that may have many different causes. Some cases of epilepsy run in families, while others are caused by tumors, head trauma or even infections. Seizures are more common in people with autism and mental retardation, perhaps because all three conditions stem from the same underlying problem, she says.

Q. Is epilepsy common in children?

A. About 30% of the 180,000 new epilepsy cases each year begin in childhood, according to the Epilepsy Foundation. Fortunately, some children grow out of epilepsy by late adolescence, Wright says.

Q. Is there a cure?

A. Although doctors can treat epilepsy with a variety of drugs, and even surgery and nerve stimulators, about one-third of people with the disease continue to have seizures, Wright says.

Q. Are the medications safe?

A. Epilepsy drugs can have serious side effects, from liver damage and dizziness to weight gain, sleepiness and a severe rash, Wright says. Patients and their parents must often make painful choices between the risks of the disease and the dangers caused by treatment.

Q. So how do people manage their disease?

A. People who have frequent, serious seizures may need to be supervised to prevent them from falling or even drowning, two common causes of death from seizures, Wright says. Young patients sometimes rebel against supervision, seeing it as an invasion of privacy.

Q. Jett Travolta apparently had Kawasaki disease. Could this have caused the seizure?

A. Probably not, Wright says. Kawasaki disease is an inflammation of the blood vessels that can damage the heart but doesn't affect the brain.