Introduction: About 3% of people will be diagnosed with epilepsy during their lifetime, but about 70% of people with epilepsy eventually go into remission.
Methods and outcomes: We conducted a systematic review and aimed to answer the following clinical questions: What are the benefits and risks of starting anti-epileptic drug treatment following a single seizure? What are the effects of monotherapy in newly diagnosed partial epilepsy, and in newly diagnosed generalised epilepsy (tonic clonic type)? What are the effects of additional treatments in people with drug-resistant partial epilepsy? Which people in remission from seizures are at risk of relapse on withdrawal of drug treatment? What are the effects of behavioural and psychological treatments for people with epilepsy? What are the effects of surgery in people with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy? We searched: Medline, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and other important databases up to April 2007 (Clinical Evidence reviews are updated periodically; please check our website for the most up-to-date version of this review). We included harms alerts from relevant organisations such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Results: We found 59 systematic reviews, RCTs, or observational studies that met our inclusion criteria. We performed a GRADE evaluation of the quality of evidence for interventions.
Conclusions: In this systematic review we present information relating to the effectiveness and safety of the following interventions: addition of second-line drugs (gabapentin, levetiracetam, lamotrigine, oxcarbazepine, tiagabine, topiramate, vigabatrin, or zonisamide), amygdalohippocampectomy, anti-epileptic drug withdrawal for people in remission, anti-epileptic drugs after a single seizure, biofeedback, carbamazepine, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), educational programmes, family counselling, hemispherectomy, lesionectomy, phenobarbital, phenytoin, relaxation therapy (alone or plus behavioural modification therapy), sodium valproate, temporal lobectomy, topiramate, vagus nerve stimulation as adjunctive therapy for partial seizures, and yoga.