Pharmacological Approaches to the Treatment of Epilepsy

In this paper we provide an overview of the basic principles of the treatment of epilepsy. These include attention to certain key points: making a correct diagnosis; the risk of seizure recurrence; the decision to initiate drug therapy in newly-diagnosed epilepsy; drug choice in relation to seizure/syndrome type and individual patient characteristics; treatment strategy in terms of monotherapy or of combination therapy; the treatment of pharmaco-resistant epilepsy, and finally the decision to withdraw antiepileptic drug(s) from seizure-free patients.