A survey of lamotrigine and vigabatrin treatment in children with severe epilepsy

Abstract

A retrospective survey was carried out of add-on treatment with lamotrigine (LTG) and vigabatrin (GVG) in 109 children with severe epilepsy, treated between 1987 and 1994, identified from a total population of 300 patients seen annually, in a tertiary referral outpatient clinic in Cardiff, Wales. Of 79 patient treatments with LTG and 86 with GVG, 42 patients were treated with add-on LTG, 52 with add-on GVG and 20 with both drugs simultaneously. A Kaplan-Meier curve, applied to each of the two index drugs, indicated that 71 and 62% of patients would be expected to continue taking LTG or GVG, respectively after 40 months. Improved seizure control (> or = 50%) at the time of audit was seen in 65% of LTG and 58% of GVG patient treatments for all epilepsy syndromes, but there was a higher proportion of patients with generalized epilepsy improved by LTG (28/41, 68%) than that improved by GVG (8/20, 40%), and only those with generalized epilepsy treated with LTG became seizure free (8/38, 21%). Similar proportions of patients discontinued LTG (16%) and GVG (15%) due to an adverse experience, but a higher proportion discontinued GVG (18%) compared with LTG (6%) because of lack of efficacy. This study supports the relative clinical effectiveness of LTG and GVG in the real world, where children with severe epilepsy are treated in clinical practice and serves to generate hypotheses to enable design of prospectively controlled trials, which should enable more rational use of these two drugs in the paediatric population with epilepsy.