Your child's doctor will discuss treatment options for your child with you. The doctor will outline the good, and sometimes bad, things associated with each approach. He will suggest the treatment that, in his opinion, is most appropriate for your child. You have the right to full information about each possible option.
Write down the information as the doctor discusses it with you. It may be quite complicated. Having it written down means you can reflect on it later, when you're better able to absorb the information.
Risks and benefits of epilepsy treatment
There is a risk involved with every treatment. Depending on the treatment, the potential risks may range from simply a lack of effect, to mild side effects, to serious medication side effects or surgical complications. The chances of these risks happening may be large or small. However, there are often risks involved with not treating epilepsy as well. Depending on the type of epilepsy, these risks may include worry and uncertainty over when a seizure will happen, physical injury from a seizure, and problems with school.
Your child's doctor will explain the potential risks and benefits of the proposed treatment clearly so that you are aware of them and can choose whether to proceed.
What happens if the doctor wants to wait for a while before treating your child?
If your child has only had one seizure, or has rare seizures, his doctor may suggest waiting to see if he has more seizures before starting medication -- a "watch and wait" approach. Anti-epileptic drugs do have side effects, and your child's doctor will probably not want to prescribe a treatment that may be unnecessary. Treatment for epilepsy is usually not started until a child has had two seizures. This delay is unlikely to harm your child.
How do you know the epilepsy treatments are good?
The treatments used to manage epilepsy have been tested in clinical trials and used regularly for years. Once a drug or treatment has been rigorously evaluated, presented at medical meetings, and published in peer-reviewed medical journals, it becomes adopted by the medical community. This is an ongoing process as researchers are continually refining and testing approaches.
However, treating epilepsy is not an exact science. Epilepsy is a complex condition, and every child is different. Not every child responds to treatment in the same way, so there is no one right treatment. Two doctors may have different opinions about how best to treat your child, and both treatments may be valid and effective.
If surgery is involved, will the same doctor do it?
Not usually. Most surgeons specialize in certain areas, so the doctor who diagnosed your child and who will take care of your child before and after surgery (the medical doctor) will refer you to the surgeon or surgical doctor who will do the operation and has lots of experience doing this procedure.
What are the chances that a given treatment for seizures will help your child?
When reading the information in this section, remember that the information we have about treatments for epilepsy comes from clinical trials and past experience. These tell us what factors seem to increase the chances that a treatment will be successful, what has happened in the past, and what is likely to happen in terms of effects, side effects, and so on. However, in most cases these are only probabilities. They cannot tell us for certain what will happen to your child.
For most children, the first medication that is tried will control their seizures. For many others, a second medication will work. Depending on the underlying cause of the seizures, some children respond well to surgery. Others respond to the ketogenic diet
. However, it is usually not possible to tell at the start of treatment whether a child will benefit from the treatment or not, or whether she will eventually become seizure-free. Depending on your child's situation, though, her doctor will probably be able to give a good prediction.