[Vigabatrin in childhood epilepsy--personal experience]

Vigabatrin has been in clinical use for 18 years. It has not been used widely in our country because of unavailability and costs of therapy. After the end of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina we started to use it in treatment of childhood epilepsies. We studied 19 patients that received vigabatrin as add on therapy and monotherapy. Follow up period was 6 months to 2 years. Nine of those patients were diagnosed as West syndrome, three had tuberous sclerosis, seven had intractable partial epilepsies. In the group with West syndrome 7 patients (5 as add on therapy and 2 as monotherapy) responded with complete control of seizures and disappearing of hypsarrhythmia in electroencephalographic recordings. One patient responded with reduction of seizures for 50%, one did not respond. In the group with tuberous sclerosis 1 was completely seizure free, one had reduction of seizures for 75%, one did not respond. Out of 7 patients with intractable partial epilepsies 3 responded with reduction of seizures between 75%-100%, 1 with reduction of seizures of 25%-50%, and 3 did not respond. Vigabatrin was well tolerated, we did not experience any serous adverse reactions. This antiepileptic drug can be a major improvement in treatment of some of the epileptic syndromes and needs further investigation.