Skip to content
Research Article Open access CC BY 3.0

Decreasing the Types and Quantities of Oral Antiepileptic Drugs Administered Alongside Intravenous Midazolam

Tomofumi Fukuda, Masayuki Shimono, Masahiro Ishii, Ayako Senju, Yumeko Matsuda, Shiho Takano, Koich Kusuhara

International Journal of Medical and Pharmaceutical Case Reports · pp. 12–16 · Published 26 Jul 2014

10.9734/IJMPCR/2014/12011

Abstract

It is reported that 0.4 to 0.8% of the world’s population suffers from epilepsy. About 30% of epileptic patients are intractable. Controlling their seizures is very important for society because many patients can participate in gainful employment. In this case study we report how we reduce and/or change the oral antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) taken (AED adjustment) by administering intravenous (IV) AED for an intractable epileptic patient. The patient was introduced to our hospital when she was 17 years old. She was born as a premature baby and had been suffering from partial seizures since she was 1 year old. We adjusted her oral AEDs in order to add newer AEDs, but the drugs did not work effectively. Thus, we hospitalized her in order to use continuous intravenous Midazolam (MDL) 0.1mg/kg/hr while we adjusted her AEDs. We were able to stop administering four out of five kinds of AEDs that the patient was taking simultaneously, without exacerbating her seizures. This case suggests that: 1) when intractable epileptic patients are taking a large number of oral AEDs, newer, additional AEDs cannot work effectively, and reducing the number of oral AEDs is crucial in adjusting their oral AEDs; and 2) IV AEDs enable a reduction in the number of oral AEDs in a short period of time without seizure exacerbation, thus facilitating safe adjustment of oral AEDs.

Intractable epilepsy poly therapy anticonvulsant readjustment intravenous anticonvulsant newer anticonvulsant.

References (6)

  1. 1 Monotherapy or Polytherapy for Epilepsy? [DOI]
  2. 2 Antiepileptic drug monotherapy versus polytherapy [DOI]
  3. 3 When one plus one makes three: The quest for rational antiepileptic polytherapy with supraadditive anticonvulsant efficacy [DOI]
  4. 4 Reduction of Two‐Drug Therapy in Intractable Epilepsy [DOI]
  5. 5 Rational conversion from antiepileptic polytherapy to monotherapy [DOI]
  6. 6 Crossover from polytherapy to monotherapy in primary generalized epilepsy [DOI]

Cited by 2

Bridge Therapy with Intravenous Antiepileptic for Optimizing Oral Antiepileptic Drugs

Ayako Senju, Masayuki Shimono, Masahiro Ishii, Tomofumi Fukuda, Yumeko Matsuda, Shiho Takano, Naoki Shiota, Koich Kusuhara · International Journal of Medical and Pharmaceutical Case Reports · 2014

Showing 1 of 2 known citations — external sources report more than can currently be individually listed.

Related research

Article metrics

Real usage data collected on this platform.

31

Page views

0

PDF downloads

3

Outbound clicks

2

Citations

Views over time

Views by country

Approximate, from request IP at view time — not citizenship or institution. Countries with fewer than 5 views are grouped as "Other".

Traffic sources

Referring site, by host.

Views and downloads exclude known bots/crawlers. Citations combines this platform's own DOI-resolved index with each external source's own reported total — see Cited by above for individually listed citing works. Last refreshed 0 seconds ago.