Managing severe epilepsy syndromes of early childhood

Managing severe epilepsy syndromes of early childhood is challenging as the seizures are typically resistant to treatment and may cause disabling mental and behavioral problems in later life. A comprehensive treatment plan includes pharma-cologic, nonpharmacologic, and surgical options. This article reviews clinical studies examining the efficacies of antiepilep-tic medications in reducing seizure frequency in Dravet syn-drome, Doose syndrome, and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. The benefits of the ketogenic diet for children with these severe epilepsies, together with the advantages of vagus nerve stimu-lation and corpus callosotomy in those patients with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, are also discussed. Special treat-ment considerations for each syndrome are also highlighted to improve the management of patients with these syndromes