Original article The choice of antiepileptic drugs in newly diagnosed epilepsy: a national French survey Franck Semah 1 , Marie-Christine Picot 2 , Philippe Derambure 3 , Sophie Dupont 4 , Laurent Vercueil 5 , Serge Chassagnon 6 , Cécile Marchal 7 , Pierre Thomas 8 , Philippe Ryvlin 9 1 Neurology Department, Hôpital Sainte-Anne, Paris and Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot, CEA, Orsay 2 Clinical and Epidemiological Research Unit, Hôpital Arnaud de Villeneuve, Montpellier 3 Clinical Neurophysiology Department, Lille 4 Epileptology Unit, Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière and Inserm Unit 224, Paris 5 Epilepsy Unit, Neurology Department, Grenoble 6 Neurology Department, Hôpitaux Civil, Strasbourg 7 Neurology Department, Hôpital Pellegrin, Bordeaux 8 EEG and Epileptology Unit, Neurology Department, Hôpital Pasteur, Nice 9 Functional Neurology and Epileptology Department, Hôpital Neurologique, Lyon, France Received July 18, 2004; Accepted for publication September 27, 2004 ABSTRACT – The choice of an antiepileptic drug (AED) in patients with epilepsy is mainly based on efficacy and safety of each drug. However, these criteria of drug selection should be further evaluated according to the epileptic syn- dromes, and adjusted to the sex and age of the patient. Unfortunately, very few studies have been conducted based on these latter criteria. We conducted a survey on the management of epilepsy treatment in adults. This survey was undertaken in France, and led to the establishment of a French consensus on antiepileptic drug treatment in adult patients with newly diagnosed epilepsy. Patients were grouped into 18 categories according to the epileptic syndrome (absence epilepsy, juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, undetermined idiopathic gen- eralized epilepsy, symptomatic or cryptogenic partial epilepsy and unclassified epilepsy), and to the patient’s gender and age. Our survey suggests that there is a consensus among French epileptologists for the choice of AEDs, mainly based on the epilepsy syndrome. Gender also plays a crucial role. Sodium valproate and lamotrigine are the two drugs of choice for generalized epilepsies, as well as for undetermined epilepsies. Lamotrigine is often prefered for women of childbearing age. First line AEDs in partial epilepsy are carbamazepine (par- ticularly for men), lamotrigine (particularly for women), and gabapentin (in the elderly). In cases of failure and/or intolerance to one of these AED, the principal alternatives are oxcarbazepine, sodium valproate and topiramate. KEY WORDS: antiepileptic drugs, treatment, survey, guidelines, epilepsy, monotherapy Correspondence: F. Semah Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot, CEA 4 place du Général-Leclerc 91401 Orsay, France Tel. 33 1 69 86 77 21 Fax 33 1 69 86 77 28. <<fsemah@cea.fr>> Epileptic Disord 2004; 6: 255-65 Epileptic Disord Vol. 6, No. 4, December 2004 255 Copyright © 2016 John Libbey Eurotext. Téléchargé par un utilisateur anonyme le 31/05/2016.