How Does Lorazepam Work for Seizures?

Lorazepam is available under Ativan brand name and it is a type of benzodiazepine medicine. The main role of this medicine to treat anxiety problems, sleeping difficulties, active seizures, such as status epilepticus, withdrawal of alcohol and nausea induced due to chemotherapy and vomiting, along with surgical procedures to interfere with the formation of memory and to sedate mechanically ventilated patients.

Lorazepam is an FDA approved medicine that helps in the treatment of almost every type of seizure problems, which include myoclonic, atonic, absence, partial seizures and clonic seizures related to the syndrome. Particularly, the medicine has played a major role for the treatment of following major problems related to seizures.

• Atonic Seizures, where patients lose their muscle tones and thereby, their body or head become limp
• Atypical absence seizures, which start all of a sudden and without any warning but involve subtle shift in the patient’s consciousness, because of which any observer fails to detect the moment when the seizure actually begins and ends.
• Tonic seizures, in which body, legs and arms of a patient may tense or stiff suddenly
• Clonic seizures, which result in the jerking of the entire body or its few parts
• Tonic clonic seizures, which include the two different seizure phases i.e. tonic phase and clonic phase
• Myoclonic seizures involving brief and shock-like muscular jerks suffered by a patient
• Simple partial seizures, which take place in a particular area of only side of the human brain but gradually, spread from that point.
• Complex partial seizures beginning focally inside the human brain and resulting in the impairment of one’s consciousness
• Secondary generalized seizures that evolve into various generalized seizures and often with the convulsions of tonic-clonic seizures.

Doctors recommend using lorazepam in combination with any other antiseptic drug and are useful in emergencies involving seizure problems. Even you may opt to use it to deal with the problem of anxiety.

The drug is absorbable in no time by taking it orally and it goes to the highest possible amount in the body of a patient within 1 or 2 hour.

If you use lorazepam in tablet form, you have to chew it or swallow it as a whole. You may take this either without or with food. Moreover, you should drink a glass of liquid or water for washing down any of the leftover medicines.

It is important to take lorazepam on a regular basis otherwise; it would not be able to work in a right way. Even you should never skip any dose even when you feel better and do not require the drug.

Sometimes, when an individual intakes lorazepam in relatively large amount or on a long-term basis, his/her body may become used to with this drug and hence, makes it less helpful or less effective. Hence, doctors usually prescribe this medication for only 4 or 6 months period, while in special cases, doctors recommend to continue with the lorazepam for a long period.

In any case, you should never stop lorazepam without consulting your doctor. This is because; stopping the intake suddenly may result in even worse conditions and may withdraw the symptoms, which include sleeplessness, irritability, seizures and nervousness. Instead, your consulted doctor has to reduce the number of dosages on a gradual basis.

You should keep this seizure medicine lorazepam in its original form and the respective container by tightly closing it and away from the reach of the children.

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Also Read:

• Effectiveness of Lorazepam & It’s Dosage, Side Effects