Objectives:

We aimed to examine the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with refractory epilepsy and to question if further improvement can be achieved by re-evaluating the data.

Methods:

Eighty consecutive patients apparently resistent to medical anti-epileptic treatment and followed regularly throughout the last year were included in the study.

Results:

Mean age of the patients included in the study was 30.35±12.11 and the male to female number was 43 to 37. At the early phase of the study all patients were found to be taking more than one anti-epileptic drugs, 9 (11.3%) of whom received them in ineffective doses. Ten patients were decided to have non-epileptic psychogenic seizures as determined by clinical and EEG data. Re-handling the patients’ management provided significant decrease in both complex partial and secondary generalized seizures (p<0.05).

Conclusion:

Even in patients with so-called refractory epilepsy, there may be a percentage responsive to treatment if evaluated and followed closely.

Keywords: Antiepileptic treatment, refractory epilepsy, pseudo-refractory epilepsy