Rinsho Shinkeigaku (Clinical Neurology)

The 42nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Neurology

Symposium IV-2: Treatments of intractable epilepsies
Clinical features and treatment of refractory epilepsy in children

Toru Kurokawa, M. D.

Department of Pediatrics, National Nishibeppu Hospital

Clinical features of refractory epilepsy in children are symptomatic localization-related epilepsy, especially frontal lobe epilepsy, the onset in young age less than 3 years-old, and complication of developmental retardation. The treatments usually start with one drug of choice for specific seizure type. In the idiopathic epilepsy group, valproic acid was effective in 82% of the patients with generalized epilepsy and in 45% of localization-related epilepsy while carbamazepine was effective in 71% and 67%, respectively. However, in the refractory group which did not react to the drugs of choice at the initial treatment and continued to have seizures, no specific drugs were effective. Therefore, various kind of drugs, new or old, should be tried in sequence irrespective of the type of seizures. The seizure control was attained only in 10% (in the cases of CZP), and 17% (CLB) in localization-related epilepsy and in 9% (VPA), 12% (NZP) and 20% (ZNS) in generalized one in the refractory group. Although new drugs developed, the patients with refractory epilepsy do not tend to decrease in frequency and overall management including daily life or surgical therapy is mandatory for the children with refractory epilepsy.

(CLINICA NEUROL, 41: 1091|1093, 2001)
key words: refractory epilepsy, symptomatic epilepsy, localization-related epilepsy, frontal epilepsy, clobazam

(Received: 12-May-01)