Dear Dr. Roach: My husband suffered a grand mal seizure about six months ago. He was in the hospital for seven days. When he came out of the seizure, he was very combative and experienced memory loss. He still deals with short-term memory loss, and his neurologist says that it could take a year for him to get back to normal. My question is: Is there any I can do to help him?
— L.H.
Dear L.H.: Seizures can happen for many reasons, and there are different types of seizures. When a person has the type of seizure that is often shown on TV or in movies, where they have uncontrollable shaking movements and aren’t conscious, it’s called a generalized tonic-clonic seizure, which used to be called “grand mal.”Most people have memory loss in the minutes before and after a generalized seizure, and they are often confused for a period of time afterward. However, prolonged memory loss and personality changes can happen due to damage to the brain during the time of the seizure because of low oxygen and excess brain activity.
What happened to him is similar to a stroke, and the recovery period is variable. Being older and being male will cause him to have a slower recovery period, but I agree with the neurologist that recovery is possible for up to a year after the event.You can help him recover by making sure that you discuss any treatment he might be getting for his seizures with his neurologist, as some treatments are more likely than others to cause memory problems. Of course, preventing further seizures is critically important. You can also ask about memory rehabilitation programs, although these are specialized and aren’t easy to find.
Dear Dr. Roach: You mentioned in a recent column that prospective randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are a powerful type of study. Can you tell me if the original COVID vaccine or any of the boosters were part of a trial like this?
— C.W.
Dear C.W.: There have been 33 RCTs that looked at the effectiveness of vaccines for COVID-19, including over 50,000 people who were given the vaccine and almost as many who received a placebo. Studies on the initial vaccines and boosters are included.
A 2021 review of all trials that were published at the time found strong evidence that the vaccines had high efficacy and low rates of serious adverse effects. There’s no such thing as a perfect vaccine, and the rate of mutation in the virus has led to challenges in making sure that the vaccines are effective against the types that are currently circulating. It’s the same case with the flu vaccine. However, public health officials have decades of experience predicting flu strains, whereas the changes in the COVID-19 virus are harder to predict.
An infectious disease doctor, Dr. Jake Scott at Stanford Medicine, and his colleagues have made an easily accessible list of RCTs of vaccines, a link to which is on my page at Facebook.com/KeithRoachMD. As of the day I write this, there are 1,683 vaccine trials on the spreadsheet, and all are available vaccines.
Not all RCTs are placebo-controlled. A placebo-controlled vaccine trial is ethical when a safe and effective vaccine doesn’t exist (as was the case at the beginning of the pandemic). RCTs may also be ethical when populations who weren’t included in previous trials get tested, or where there’s limited access to the existing vaccine. In 2026, further placebo-controlled RCTs for COVID-19 would be unethical.
A new vaccine should be tested against the best available treatment, including any of the COVID-19 vaccines such as Moderna or Pfizer. Readers may email questions to ToYourGoodHealth@med.cornell.edu.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Dr. Roach: How to help a person who’s experienced a tonic-clonic seizure
Reporting by Dr. Keith Roach, To Your Health / The Detroit News
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