Stephen Hantus, MD: Acute Symptomatic Seizures

“Undertreating the acute symptomatic seizure is a big danger."

Stephen Hantus, MD, Director of the cEEG and Epilepsy Consult Service at the Cleveland Clinic Epilepsy Center, sat down with NeurologyLive at the American Epilepsy Society’s annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, to provide insight into the cautions that physicians should heed when treating patients with acute symptomatic seizures

One area that Hantus emphasized where clinicians should be extremely cautious is undertreating acute symptomatic seizure, which could change a patients’ chance for long-term epilepsy.

With that is also overtreating, when the seizures have stopped and patients are no longer in the acute phase of their illness leaving them on several antiepileptic drugs can be extremely harmful to the patient. Hantus recommends that after the acute period to use the EEG monitoring in order to withdrawal the medicines so patients can eventually be prescribed a rational polytherapy that will keep them seizure free with no side effects.