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Portrait of a Child with Epilepsy
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What to do When Epilepsy Medication Fails
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Taking Control of Seizures: A Personal Look
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Seizures While You Sleep?
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Seizure Control: What Can You Take for Epilepsy?
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Treating Epilepsy: From Drug Therapy to Surgery
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Witnessing a Seizure: What Should You Do?
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Webcast Transcript
TREVOR RESNICK, MD: Everybody agrees that the initial treatment is monotherapy. In other words, one drug to try and control the seizures completely.
MICHAEL DUCHOWNY, MD: There are very few drugs that are approved for monotherapy in children. Trileptal has been approved for monotherapy.
ANNOUNCER: Physicians do their best to control their young patients with monotherapy.
MICHAEL DUCHOWNY, MD: If the child turns out to have resistant epilepsy, where the medications are ineffective, and several monotherapy regimens have been tried, it may be time to think about some type of adjunctive therapy, meaning a combination of more than one medicine to bring the seizures under control. Fortunately, that situation is uncommon.
ANNOUNCER: But for children who don't respond to medication, science has actually discovered a diet that can help. The diet is very restrictive and has its own side effects, but is useful for children with difficult-to-control seizures.
MICHAEL DUCHOWNY, MD: The diet that is used in most centers is called the ketogenic diet. This is a diet which is very high in fats and proteins with virtually no carbohydrates. The diet is effective for all types of seizures in approximately 40 percent of the cases, and there's probably another 10 or 20 percent that get significant benefit.
ANNOUNCER: Surgery may also be an option.
TREVOR RESNICK, MD: If it becomes evident after using one or two medications that the seizures are not controlled and there's an identifiable area in the brain where there's a scar or a tumor or an abnormal region, that patient is a very good candidate for resective surgery, and the outcome is excellent.
ANNOUNCER: No one wants to hear their child has epilepsy, but the outlook today is more positive than ever.
MICHAEL DUCHOWNY, MD: I think the future for children with epilepsy is getting better and better. We have a wide variety of new treatments available. I'm excited about the possibility of genetic therapy and stem cell therapy. All of these, I think, offer tremendous potential for the future.
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