Dementia Seizure Spectrum™ (DSS)
DSS sorts what someone noticed about an episode into four domains: Seizure Events, Movement Changes, Awareness Changes and Behavioral Changes. It describes what happened. It does not decide what caused it.
Observations about one person are often scattered across notes, reports and conversations. The domains give them one structure. One episode may involve one domain or several.
Observable events associated with more conventionally recognized seizure presentations.
Observable signals
Abrupt, episodic, or stereotyped movement changes that may contribute to a broader event pattern.
Observers should document what occurred without presuming its cause.
Observable signals
Sudden or episodic changes in responsiveness, engagement, communication, or awareness.
Exact onset, duration, responsiveness, and recovery should be documented.
Observable signals
Abrupt, episodic, or stereotyped changes in behavior, affect, language, or purposeful activity.
Behavioral observations alone do not establish seizure activity.
Observable signals
A family member, staff member or system records what happened: onset, duration, responsiveness, movement, behavior and recovery.
The observation is described across the four domains, without deciding its cause.
DSEF considers the observations, background, other possible explanations and safety, and returns an educational report. It does not diagnose.
Recognize, respond, document and advocate.
Describe one episode in DSEF, or see how organizations work with Seagull.
The DSS Framework is a structured domain model for describing reported observations associated in published literature with possible seizure activity in dementia. It does not determine that an event was a seizure, provide an individual probability, or replace clinical evaluation. Similar observations can have neurological, cardiovascular, infectious, medication-related, sleep-related, metabolic, psychiatric, environmental, or dementia-related explanations.