There are many different causes for fits. Less than 1 in every 20 people who develop fits in adult life will have a brain tumour. So the chances are that your father's seizure was not due to a brain tumour. Even so fits should never be ignored and he should see his family doctor (GP) for a check up.

The Department of Health has recently given guidelines to general practitioners about people who have recently had a seizure for the first time. These recommend that your doctor should make an urgent hospital appointment with a specialist if either:

• the fit lasted for more than a few minutes
• the fit was what is known as a focal fit. This is a seizure affecting just one part of the body rather than causing convulsions of the whole body.

Normally the 'urgent' hospital appointment means that the specialist will see you within two weeks.

When the specialist sees your father he or she will take his full medical history and carry out a careful physical examination. The specialist will probably do other tests which may include:

• a CT-scan of his head which uses x-rays to build up 3-dimensional pictures of the brain
• an MRI scan of his head which uses magnetic fields to build up 3-dimensional pictures of the brain
• an EEG (electroencephalogram) which uses wires attached to the head to measure the electrical activity in the brain.

If these tests do show that there is a tumour then further treatment might involve an operation to take the growth away or it may mean some radiotherapy or chemotherapy, depending on the exact type of the tumour and its size.

So, overall it is unlikely that your father's seizure is going to be due to a brain tumour but it is still very important that he sees his doctor for a check up.