Medication Overview

The key with medications is that one, they all have potential side effects. For any medication out there I can line up people on either side to tell you how great it is and how bad it is. And so until you try it, it’s hard to tell for sure. And the other key that I point out to all my patients is that generally speaking, the key to starting something new is to go slow. Start with the lowest dose possible and inch up a little bit, get you to a therapeutic dose, and again, I would point out a low therapeutic dose and then we sort of see what happens. If another seizure happens often and we sort of say, okay, if another seizure happens, you are taking the medications you’ve been on it a reasonable amount of time, well shoot, we need to bump it up a little bit. The data tells us that about 50% of patients respond becoming totally seizure-free after one med. After two meds, we’re looking at probably about 60% or close to 60%. After three meds, the likelihood of making someone’s seizure-free is below 4%. it’s very low.