Abstract

Aim: Oxcarbazepine is a new antiepileptic drug characterized by good efficacy and high tolerability in children with epilepsy. This study aimed to evaluate clinical usage of oxcarbazepine efficacy and safety in a group of pediatric epilepsy patients who had been followed up by pediatric neurology department of a reference children's hospital. Method: Fifty five patients with childhood epilepsy who treated with oxcarbazepine were evaluated beetwen June 2004-January 2007 retrospectively. Subsequent to 10 mg/kg initial dose, with increased doses of 10 mg/kg /week, maximum dose of 50 mg/kg reached. Improvement in seizure frequency as >%50 defined as good response. Results: Mean treatment duration was 27.6 ± 12 months (6-36 months). Mean age was 11.2±3.3 (3-17) years. Twenty five (45%) of the patients detected with partial and 30 (55%) of the patients with generalized epilepsy and those 33 patients (60%) had symptomatic epilepsy, while 16 (29%) had cryptogenic, and 6 (11%) had idiopathic epilepsy. Mean OXC dose toas found as 24.5±9.2 mg/kg/day, (10-50 mg/kg/day). With oxcarbezepine treatment, >%50 seizure improvement was achieved in 25 (45.4%) of the patients. Twenty six (%47.3) of the patients were seizure-free. No significant di ffer ence was found between the groups of patients with partial and generalized epilepsies, in respect to the treatment response (p=0.759). Side effects were reported in 4 (7.2%) of cases. Conclusion: Oxcarbazepine could be used safely in generalized epilepsies and partial epilepsies, because of fewer side effects and high effectiveness, both as a monotherapy and polytherapy.