EDITORIAL

review on the latest antiepileptic drug (AED) to be market-ed in the US for the adjunctive treatment of partial seizures, tiagabine (Gabitril). This is the fifth new AED to be re-leased in the past 5 years. Prior to 1993, the last AED to be approved for seizures/epilepsy was valproic acid in 1978. Clinicians and patients now have at their disposal an im-pressive, and perhaps confusing, array of new drug tech-nologies for the treatment of various seizure disorders. Why has this flurry of activity occurred? Are these new AEDs true advancements or just minor modifications? How can clinicians assess the role that each of the new AEDs may have in the clinical care of the patient with epilepsy? Fundamentally, the question that we must ad-dress is, Do we really need and should we afford all these new AEDs