Lacosamide Experience in Childhood Epilepsy from a Tertiary Center, Turkey

Objective: To evaluate the demographic, clinical, electroencephalographic data, and treatment responses of patients treated by lacosamide retrospectively. Material and Method: We included patients who followed up at the Medical Faculty of Akdeniz University with the epilepsy who received oral lacosamide as add-on therapy between May 2015 and January 2022. The age, gender, clinical history, semiological features of the seizures, etiological classification, EEG findings, antiepileptic treatment choices, and the response of the lacosamide treatment were evaluated from the hospital records. The response rate of lacosamide was determined by the decrease of seizure frequency and the reduction of the seizure duration. Results: A total of 34 children diagnosed with epilepsy were re-evaluated for the study between 6-20 years old. 50% of the patients were diagnosed with frontal lobe epilepsy, 5.8% were Lennox-Gestaut Syndrome, 5.8% were progressive myoclonic epilepsy, 5.8% were occipital lobe epilepsy, and 2.9% West syndrome, also 29.4% of them were classified as idiopathic/genetic. Lacosamide therapy had been initiated patients with focal (67.7%) and generalized (32.3%) epileptic activity based on EEG. The seizure frequency was decreased more than 50% in 52 % of the patients. 94.4% of them had focal seizure activity. Seizure freedom was achieved in 5 (27.7%) patients , one of them had generalized seziure. Conclusion: Although the response to lacosamide treatment is more effective in patients with focal seizures, may be considered to initiate lacosamide at an earlier stage, independent of seizure type.
Keywords: Lacosamide, childhood epilepsy