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new diagnosis- Trileptal Side Affects

Thu, 03/16/2017 - 16:29
7 y/o just diagnosed with focal epilepsy and complex partial seizures. Neurologist wants to put her on Trileptal. Wondering what your experience is with side affects of this drug. I read that some people experience dizziness and lack of balance-this would be challenging as we already deal with some of this.

Comments

everyone is super different,

Submitted by Amy Jo on Thu, 2017-03-16 - 18:32
everyone is super different, you can't know your child's reaction without trying. our child's only side effects with trileptal were being tired for a few days after each dose increase for a few days, she always did well but took a huge dose after a few years (think no meds could control her seizures fully at that point, each drug helped but at a certain point the focal seizures started tapering off). being tired is the only common side effect I've heard people mention, enough to cause some people to give up as their side effects didn't go away. it doesn't impact cognition which is my concern with a lot of seizure meds. our child has had dizziness and issues when too much lamotrigine hits her system so we broke up her dosing. also had a bad reaction to keppra although it really did slow down seizures dramatically, some people have no problem with it so... you can't know how your child will react, a problem side effect might not occur at a dose needed for control.

Thank you for your feedback

Submitted by cholland on Thu, 2017-03-16 - 19:43
Thank you for your feedback-such a hard decision especially for us as the seizures that she has are hard to even detect.  They showed up on the EEG otherwise we would really not have known she was having them.

My 13 year old takes

Submitted by cmtadrum on Thu, 2017-03-16 - 22:46
My 13 year old takes Trileptal. Tiredness is the only side effect that he has had. As he was getting to his full dose he needed bloodwork to watch for sodium level issues (I guess this is a possible dangerous side effect) but his were always fine.

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