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Dietary therapy is not the best option for refractory nonsurgical epilepsy
Author(s) -
Vaccarezza María Magdalena,
Silva Walter Horacio
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
epilepsia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.687
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1528-1167
pISSN - 0013-9580
DOI - 10.1111/epi.13074
Subject(s) - vagus nerve stimulation , refractory (planetary science) , epilepsy , medicine , ketogenic diet , adverse effect , drug resistant epilepsy , corpus callosotomy , intensive care medicine , deep brain stimulation , epilepsy surgery , anesthesia , stimulation , vagus nerve , psychiatry , disease , physics , astrobiology , parkinson's disease
Summary The ketogenic diet (KD) is currently a well‐established treatment for patients with medically refractory, nonsurgical epilepsy. However, despite its efficacy, the KD is highly restrictive and constitutes a treatment with serious potential adverse effects, and often with difficulties in its implementation and compliance. Patients on the KD require strict follow‐up and constant supervision by a medical team highly experienced in its management in order to prevent complications. Other alternative treatments for patients with refractory epilepsy include vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), new‐generation antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), corpus callosotomy (CC), and responsive focal cortical stimulation (RNS). In this review, we explain not only the difficulties of the KD as a therapeutic option for refractory epilepsy but also the benefits of other therapeutic strategies, which, in many cases, have proven to have better efficacy than the KD itself.