Successfully Treated Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizure with Shigyakusan and Hangebyakujutsutemmato / 日本東洋医学雑誌

ABSTRACT

We report a case of loss of consciousness multiple times with and without focal to bilateral tonic-clonic seizure-like episodes that we diagnosed as psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, and successfully treated with shigyakusan and hangebyakujutsutemmato. The patient did not have fullness and discomfort in the chest and hypochondrium (kyokyokuman), nor spasmodic bilateral rectus abdominis in an interictal state. On the other hand, she had extremely cold limbs, especially feet and hands, with fingers being flexion and rigid under the status of loss of consciousness even without tonic-clonic seizure-like episodes in the ictal state. After being warmed and loosened, her consciousness level slowly recovered. She had headaches frequently in a non-ictal state, too. We identified that she had qi deficiency (kikyo), qi depression (kiutsu), fluid retention (suitai) and qi counter flow (kigyaku) in the interictal state, while kiutsu and kigyaku were extremely strong in the ictal state. In this case, the combined use of shigyakusan and hangebyakujutsutemmato was useful, considering that the patient had two different locations of disease (byoi) that required treatment.