Epileptic Seizures on Trains - Are they common?

My late brother suffered seriously from epilepsy from the age of 3 until he died last January, aged 65.

As far as I can recall he never suffered from a fit whilst travelling, but in recent years he had fits quite frequently at night whilst asleep. During his life his fits changed from the petit mal type to the grand mal as he got older. Normally apart from the embarrassment of losing sphincter control, he didn't injure himself, but this wasn't always the case, and I remember him suffering some horrific injuries when he was a child. These were a result of the petit mal type attacks for which he got no warning whatsoever, and he simply lost consciousness, and collapsed. In later life, other problems associated with his epilepsy meant that his gait was poor, and he quite often tripped - without having an attack.

He carried a bracelet indicating his condition, and wore a head protector if his condition was going through a bad period. As a family, our biggest problem was the tendency of well-meaning organisations to call an ambulance when he stumbled on their property. Unfortunately this took him into A&E and in one instance at least, the staff there had no experience of his problem, and much needless time was wasted. Not calling the ambulance would have been much kinder as I could then have got him home to a dry change of clothes, instead of him waiting in wet clothes in A&E for 4 hours.

Both Southern and South Eastern appear to leave passengers who have passed out on the train until they have either recovered or they have received professional medical help that confirms they can be moved.

I catch an Uckfield train to London Bridge and then a South Eastern train to Charing Cross. I am delayed ny someone being taken ill on a train probably once a month, although it is always on the inward journey. I can never remember it happening on the outgoing journey. I suspect most of these cases are just people fainting.

I cant recall this happening as much 10 or 15 years ago.

As an aside pulling the communication cord also seems to be a lot more common. I had done around 25 years with it never being pulled. In the last 2 uts been pulled around 6 times on various trains.

On reading this thread I had a thought.

A couple of times on Greater Anglia, I have been the only occupant of the 1st class comparment on a class 321 for a 45 minute journey. If I had collapsed and slid out of my seat onto the floor. With the connecting door shut and it not being easy to see the floor through the windows at a station, would anyone notice?

I do not have any history of passing out, but someone who does could be in that position.

I did read that someone died from a drugs overdose in the toilet of a FCC train and no one checked for 2 days before they were discovered.

Don't know anything about First Class stuff, but surely the ticket examiner would pop his \ her head in a few times on the journey?

bAzTNM said:

Don't know anything about First Class stuff, but surely the ticket examiner would pop his \ her head in a few times on the journey?

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There are DOO services with First Class where you may have to rely on there being other passengers, cleaners, RPIs, or other staff, rather than a guard or dedicated member of staff regularly examining tickets, which I think is what you mean. The question relates to GA where I presume this could be the case for the specified journey(s). Of course, even with guards, some services have features which mean it is not practical to check tickets for quite a while (frequent stops, overcrowding in Standard, positions of controls for guards...). This has led me to wonder about this situation, too - and I have also known incidents where passengers have had to "break out of" a First Class section due to jammed doors, where there was no alarm handle/button present, or any guard in sight, which could present a similar hazard to health in an emergency within the compartment.

Darren R said:

I did wonder about that, I must admit, when posting. But surely "fit" is just a generic, non-medical term and doesn't necessarily imply any specific medical condition. (That's certainly what I meant by the use of the word anyway, and it certainly wasn't used in a derogatory way.)

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As has been mentioned in the thread already, a seizure can be brought on by a range of causes and the person doesn't always have an underlying neurological diagnosis of something, epilepsy, tumour etc. Therefore, coining all seizures as 'epileptic fits' brings around this common misconception frequented on this thread that all seizures have an underlying course of epilepsy.

Epilepsy itself can cause people to suffer from epileptic fits, however people who don't have epilepsy and fit have a non-epileptic seizure.


It's important to note to the people thinking that bright lights, shining of lights from windows etc. - photosensitive epilepsy is extremely rare. This is another common misconception, that all epilepsy sufferers suffer seizures due to lighting of some sort, when this isn't the case in the vast majority of cases.

I've only had one person having a fit on-board in my time. They were undiagnosed.

Diabetics not having breakfast have made up the bulk of collapsed passengers (excepting late-night drunks).

VP185 said:

We were trained by FGW that a ambulance only needs to be called if
You know it's their first seizure
The seizure lasts for more than 5 minutes
If they injure themselves, or
If they have multiple seizures without regaining consciousness

Admittedly it is very frightening to witness though!

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That's new to me, I never had any instructions like that.

My personal rule of thumb would be to call an ambulance to the next manned station where there were staff to look after them, and de-train them there to be checked out and continue their journey when fit, unless somebody was with them who was competent to look after them, in which case I would consider keeping them on-board.

Flamingo said:

Diabetics not having breakfast have made up the bulk of collapsed passengers (excepting late-night drunks).

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"Yes, I took my insulin but then I wasn't hungry so I didn't have breakfast".

Facepalm.

Perusing various logs - the instances of ill passengers (of all sorts - apart from alcohol medicated cases) , seems higher than ever - partly no doubt due to greater numbers but also stress etc on the passengers - not neccesarily rail caused. A very good thing is the bike equipped Paramedic you often see at St Pancras - ready and willing to deal with the issues arising on the big trains and the Tube. They do a fantastic job - once had a suspected and actual heart attack on a 143 "somewhere in Wales" - and they got to the scene and no doubt saved a life within 8 mins.

I once had a suspected drunken women on a train - turned out she was a stressed diabetic and the conductor (better 1st aid trained than me) , clocked it and returned with his lunch box , calmed her down and made her eat a well buttered scone and jam (his own !) - within a short while she was fine and embarrassed at the problems she thought she had caused. Course the traincrew member was commended - rightly so.

ralphchadkirk said:

"Yes, I took my insulin but then I wasn't hungry so I didn't have breakfast".

Facepalm.

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Having lived with a diabetic person for three years if he did that i would give him a good old slap!

He had fits a few times i always called an ambulance even though i was 90% sure he just needed rest, when its a mate not family i didn't want to make the decision not to call for help.

ChiefPlanner said:

Perusing various logs - the instances of ill passengers (of all sorts - apart from alcohol medicated cases) , seems higher than ever - partly no doubt due to greater numbers but also stress etc on the passengers - not neccesarily rail caused. A very good thing is the bike equipped Paramedic you often see at St Pancras - ready and willing to deal with the issues arising on the big trains and the Tube. They do a fantastic job - once had a suspected and actual heart attack on a 143 "somewhere in Wales" - and they got to the scene and no doubt saved a life within 8 mins.

I once had a suspected drunken women on a train - turned out she was a stressed diabetic and the conductor (better 1st aid trained than me) , clocked it and returned with his lunch box , calmed her down and made her eat a well buttered scone and jam (his own !) - within a short while she was fine and embarrassed at the problems she thought she had caused. Course the traincrew member was commended - rightly so.

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It can be difficult and I suspect, but am willing to be corrected, that staff are not so well trained in First Aid as they were in BR days. I was involved in saving two heart attack victims, back in the Sixties, whilst travelling on the cushions. Curiously, my late lamented father in law, was the Guard on both occasions. It could have been anyone else, that wasn't really the point, but we were far more used to dealing with 'accidents at work' than people are today.

A couple of years ago, I came out of a local pub, with a friend, and found a young woman, flat on her back and 'dead to the world'. the first thing that we did, after ascertaining that she was still alive, was to put her in the 'recovery position'. A 'phone call brought the Ambulance service and the opinion of the para-medics that she was diabetic. Away they went, and away we went, until the police turned up looking for statements. The first thing that they asked was:

'Had we touched her?'

I'm afraid that my reply is not suitable to be repeated on a public site.

Anyway, well done to the conductor for giving her jam. He is a credit to the railway service.

ChiefPlanner said:

Perusing various logs - the instances of ill passengers (of all sorts - apart from alcohol medicated cases) , seems higher than ever - partly no doubt due to greater numbers but also stress etc on the passengers - not neccesarily rail caused. A very good thing is the bike equipped Paramedic you often see at St Pancras - ready and willing to deal with the issues arising on the big trains and the Tube. They do a fantastic job - once had a suspected and actual heart attack on a 143 "somewhere in Wales" - and they got to the scene and no doubt saved a life within 8 mins.
.

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Theyve done well there to get to Wales from St Pancakes on a pedal bike in 8 minutes

Flamingo said:

I've only had one person having a fit on-board in my time. They were undiagnosed.

Diabetics not having breakfast have made up the bulk of collapsed passengers (excepting late-night drunks).

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I work for a College and hence come into contact with large numbers of students. My experience is the same, diabetes related problems are the commonest reason for calling 999 by a long way.