Your doctor has prescribed antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). Perhaps you are holding a first-time prescription, or perhaps you have been taking them for 30 years. Either way, once you are on AEDs, is there an exit strategy? Or are AEDs forever?
Driving and Epilepsy
In the United States, the automobile crash rate among people with epilepsy is about 50% higher than baseline, but still lower than is the crash rate for teenage male drivers. Automobile license restrictions are a form of discrimination against people with epilepsy.
Refractory Seizures
For many, one seizure a year is far too many; others are not bothered by one a week. In a general sense, seizures are refractory if they are frequent and severe enough or the required therapy for them troublesome enough, to seriously interfere with quality of life. Seizures can be uncontrolled for three broad reasons: 1. The diagnosis is wrong; 2. The treatment is wrong; 3. The seizures do not respond to the best diagnosis and treatment.
Who Knows the Most About Epilepsy?
Who knows the most about epilepsy? Clue-it isn't the doctors. Doctors know technical material, for example, which drug to try in a particular circumstance, what tests to order and how to interpret them. But, with rare exceptions, doctors do not have seizures, do not suffer the side effects of seizure medicines and do not experience the societal and life limitations resulting from epilepsy.
Photosensitive Seizures
We have just finished the holiday season and many of our lucky children will have received videogames or flashing toys as presents. Are these games a risk for provoking seizures? I had the opportunity to participate in the formulation of consensus opinions of experts on photosensitive seizures, under the sponsorship of the Epilepsy Foundation of America.
Epilepsy: A Matter of Life and Death
On the second day of the new year, the Hollywood couple, John Travolta and Kelly Preston lost their son. Jett Travolta died, reportedly because of a fall caused by a seizure. Jett was known to have epilepsy. When a tragedy happens to a celebrity, media coverage is extensive, and people with epilepsy and their families worry: what are the chances that this will happen to me?
