Seizure Bedside Bench: What You Do, What You Never Do, What You Saw
A seizure is a population of cortical neurons firing together without the usual braking, and everything you chart follows from that. Work the bedside in the correct order — four harmful options are hidden in the list and the bench will tell you exactly what each one breaks. Then switch to the second drill, tick the features you actually observed, and watch the classification build itself from your observations rather than from the scan.
1042 — Mrs Okoye, 47, room 512You walk in as she stiffens in bed, then begins jerking symmetrically. Tap the actions in the order you would do them, earliest first. Five of the nine belong nowhere in this scenario at all; tapping one shows you exactly which injury it causes.
Tap what you do next
Tick only what you actually observedModern classification asks three questions in order: where did it start (focal, generalized or unknown), was awareness preserved, and were the first prominent features motor or non-motor. Tick the findings from your own eyes and the bench answers those three questions live.
Before and during
Afterwards
One mechanism, every finding you chart
Read the trace clinicallyThe tonic block is sustained motor-cortex discharge: the chest is fixed, no air is moving, and the patient goes dusky. That cyanosis is expected and brief, and it is not a reason to force anything between clenched teeth. The clonic bursts are that same discharge being interrupted by returning inhibition, which is why the jerks slow and then stop. The flat postictal stretch is a cortex out of neurotransmitter and running an oxygen debt — drowsiness, confusion, headache and muscle soreness for minutes to hours. Incontinence follows sphincter release, and the tongue bite is lateral, because the jaw closes on a tongue caught between the molars.