HealingWell
Search Close Search
☰

Help my son has WPW (Wolfe Parkinson White) and Epilepsy -- are they related?

Support Forums
>
Heart & Cardiovascular Disease
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply
❬ ❬ Previous Thread |Next Thread ❭ ❭
Posted 12/20/2005 10:55 AM (GMT -8)
My son and I are curious whether these electrical abnormalties could be related.  Haven't found out anything so far in searching.  Anyone else have both?  His epilepsy medication seems to sometimes have a negative effect.  Thanks so much, we are so scared....
Posted 12/22/2005 7:02 PM (GMT -8)
Oh its so hard when our children are having health problems like this.  I would say this would be a question for your doctor, either his primary care doc or his cardiologist.  I haven't heard any members here mention that they have both of these problems but maybe someone will be able to be more helpful.  How old is your son.  Yes, I'm sure its very scary and hope and pray he gets better soon and that the doctors can find a treatment that will help him get better.  Hang in there!  God Bless, Pat
Posted 12/28/2005 3:46 PM (GMT -8)
My daughter thought she might be having seizures, but they only lasted a maximum of about 2 minutes, but 4-10 times a day, at least! Turned out to be PSVT(sudden rapid heart rate...multiple pacemaker/cell locations in the heart firing at different times). During our research, we found many symptoms that seemed to WPW, but I was never able to get a MD to concider the possibility(some primary symptomwas missing). We put a 24 hour Monitor on her to establish this PSVT problem. Went through one ablation and my daughter descided to try less physically invasive drug therapy. Took two to three years to recover completely from the ablation therapy and PSVT. May not be related but the initial possible seizure diagnosis was considered until the monitor established the PSVT. I always wondered if the two could be confused. I actually found a study or review that suggested that at some point this was a frequent mis-diagnosis, but never found any other confirmation, but the question has always lingered.
Posted 2/7/2006 10:40 AM (GMT -8)

Thanks for the great replies!  I hope your daughter is OK.  My son has focal in the parietal lobe on EEG.  What is ablation therapy and PSVT?  Does it have anything to do with a long PR interval?  I am grateful for the info about possible misdiagnosis.  The epilepsy meds might be helping my son because he hasn't had a spell in a while but they come in waves.  We recently went to a cardiac electrician who now thinks it may be a vagus nerve problem related to the epilepsy not WPW.  Of course they want to do another monitor thing for a month and then a slew of other tests before proceeding to the one that absolutely rules out WPW.  My son is turning 18 and has lost his health coverage so we are self-pay and wants to skip ahead to the cath-type thing which is the absolute decider (I think they fix it then too if he has it) and I can't blame him.  I'm worried about the vagus nerve thing, because I read a little about the implants... I don't know if that is what they are thinking he might need if not WPW...wrong to be scared about that?

✚ New Topic ✚ Reply