[Remissions and relapses in epilepsy]

To study a cohort of adult patients with various forms of epilepsy to determine various clinical patterns of remission with subsequent relapse of seizures.

The study included 1384 patients. Two hundred and forty-nine patients with one or more remissions in the history resulted in relapse. Patients were stratified into 6 groups by clinical features of the disease. For each group, a long-term outcome of the disease was evaluated.

Return to a basic therapy after a relapse due to dose reduction or AED discontinuation does not guarantee the remission. One or more «honeymoons» in medical history are predictors of the low probability of achieving remission. Patients with focal epilepsies often have one or more long-term remissions that may not correspond with AED treatment. In these patients, the relapse often happen in the second decade of life with the following development of intractable epilepsy.