Current therapeutic approaches to epilepsy

Epilepsy is one of the most common ailments of man with a prevalence of approximately 1%. It is estimated that 50 millions person’s worldwide may have this disorder. Although many are well controlled with available therapies, perhaps one quarter of the total continue to have seizures. Anticonvulsant drugs are the mainstay of epilepsy management and may have to be taken for life. In more than 20% of those affected, chronic in aractable (refraction) epilepsy develops. This necessitates the use of combination therapy. But the use of these drugs in combination is plagued by cognitive impairment and drug interactions with the results that only about 10% of the patients with refractory epilepsy seem to benefit substantially from polypharmacy. The last past two decades has brought many advances to the treatment of epilepsy, including many new pharmacological agents. So substantial data has been collected both chemically as well as pharmacological point of view. Hopefully this will be helpful for Primary care physicians and as well as those involved in epilepsy patients care. Therefore they should be familiar with the new options available.