Abstracts

Levetiracetam is an anti-convulsant approved in 1999 for use as an adjunctive therapy for patients with partial onset seizures in adults. There is significant use of it in patients with generalized epilepsy. The objective of this study was to ascertain the effectiveness of levetiracetam as adjunctive therapy to normalize an EEG in patients who have had a significant decrease in seizure frequency., A list of patients, who have been on levetiracetam, was generated from past dictations, yielding 105 patients. The dictations of these patients were reviewed to determine the patients diagnosed with primary generalized epilepsy. There were twenty seven patients (N=27) with ages in the range of 3 years to 55 years that met the criteria. An extensive chart review was conducted to determine whether patient had clinical seizure control and the effect of levetiracetam on the patients EEG. The seizure resolution was tabulated and charted to compare with normalizing of EEG., Of the 27 patients, 11 had resolution (41%) in clinical seizures, 8 had significant reduction (30%) in seizure frequency, 6 patients who failed (22%), and 2 patients were not able to tolerate (7%) the medicine. Of the 11 patients who had resultion, 7 had normalization (64 %) of EEG and 2 had an unchanged (18%) EEG. There were 2 other patients with a pending EEG., Levetiracetam is effective as an adjunct therapy in patients with intractable primary generalized epilepsy. It not only improves seizures control, but in those patients with resolution of clinical seizures, there is normalization of EEG in a significant number of patients.[figure1],