Clobazam Experience in Childhood Epilepsy from a Tertiary Center, Turkey

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of clobazam by electroclinical and treatment responses in childhood epilepsy from a tertiary pediatric reference center.

Material and method: A cohort of 131 children with ‘refractory’ epilepsy who were received oral clobazam as add-on therapy between May 2015 and January 2022 were evaluated retrospectively. Demographical and electroclinical features of the patients were evaluated from the hospital records. Therapeutic response was recorded by evaluating seizure frequency and seizure duration after initiating clobazam.

Results: The cohort consisted of 46.6% males and 53.4% females, aged 14 months-18 years. 6.1% children had Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome with multiple seizure types, 13.7% had West Syndrome, 26.7% of patients had frontal lobe epilepsy and 12.2% had temporal lobe epilepsy and 12.2% had occipital lobe epilepsy and 29.1% of them were unclassified. 80.9% of the patients were on 3 or more antiepileptic drugs. The seizure frequency, severity, and duration were decreased in 71%, were increased 6.1% of the children at 12th month of the treatment. The frequency of seizures was decreased by more than 50% in 68.4% of patients with generalized epilepsy and 77.7% of patients with focal epilepsy. No side effects were noted in 93.1% of children.

Conclusion: Clobazam is a well-tolerated, safe, and very effective antiepileptic drug in childhood epilepsy with a broad spectrum of antiepileptic activity, minimal side effects. It can be used as add- on therapy earlier to control seizures where first line antiepileptics alone prove to be ineffective.
Keywords: childhood epilepsy, clobazam, resistant epilepsy, antiepileptic