My daughter-in-law has epilepsy and now she is 8- week pregnant. We are on the needles: is that a right recommendation that she should drop her seizure medications during pregnancy?
×
4 Reasons Why Ask DoctorBase™ is the Most Efficient Way to SEO and Establish Your Brand Online
- Ask DoctorBase™ is a free service for patients on the DoctorBase platform - currently servicing over 6 million American patients of record.
- All answers submitted by healthcare professionals (you) are for entertainment purposes only and do not constitute doctor-patient relationships. All patients must agree to this before using Ask DoctorBase™.
- Our software and our Marketing Engineering staff review each answer and optimize your answers for keywords valuable to your specialty. It is a well kept secret that doctors (you) - not SEO consultants - are the ones who have the most valuable content prized by search engines. Ask DoctorBase™ "unlocks and optimizes" your content in the most efficient manner possible with today's technology.
- Finally, the doctor who provides the most popular answer - "the Featured Answer," gets an added benefit by allowing patients to write rave reviews about your expertise - reviews that are submitted to both Google and Google Local through our Preferred Data Provider relationship.
Ask Dr. Molly if you have questions or want a personal session on how to best use Ask DoctorBase™ for maximum marketing impact.
epilepsy in pregnancy
Find low drug prices at local & online pharmacies
Find low drug prices at local & online pharmacies
NO. If she is well controlled she should not stop her medication. The right thing to do is to follow up with her neurologist first. Sometimes women feel stopping the medication is the "safest" thing to do. The problem could be that she rebounds and starts having more seizures which is dangerous to her and her pregnancy. She should also be taking extra folic acid (4 mg instead of 4 mcg) depending on which medication she takes. Most patients have good pregnancies regardless of their seizure history, but her OBGYN and Neurologist should first asses her. Good Luck.
Anti-seizure medications can increase the risk of birth defects , but the presence of a seizure disorder in and of itself puts the pregnancy at risk. The effects of seizures during pregnancy can be potentially harmful. If a women stops taking her epilepsy medication, she may experience an increase in seizures. Much is known about the risks of the different medications used to prevent seizures in pregnancy. Patients with a seizure disorder should consult their neurologist and the neurologist will work with the obstetrician to find the safest approach weighing the risks of both the medication and the seizure disorder. In addition the patients in our practice are referred to a perinatologist, or high risk specialist for screening for birth defects and to help guide the management of theses pregnancies.Expertise is required but a team approach should be quite effective. Most patients with seizures have successful pregnancies and deliver healthy babies with the proper care.
Factors contributing to increased seizures during pregnancy include:
- high levels of oestrogens
- increased nausea and vomiting
- changes in plasma volume
- altered gastric motility
- altered protein binding
- increased metabolic capacity of maternal liver
- stressors, and worries about the fetus
- too often diagnostic imaging (X-ray, sonography)
- others.
The anti-epileptic therapy and anti-convulsants are withdrawn when there is:
- no seizure activity during the past 2-5 years
- only a single type of seizure
- a normal EEG with treatment
- a normal neurologic exam.
Treatment:
- Folate supplementation (in the first trimester of pregnancy)
- Vitamin K supplementation (10mg/day in the third trimester of pregnancy)
- Monotherapy (only one anti-convulsant) with adjusted dosage is a successful way to handle epilepsy during pregnancy.
- high levels of oestrogens
- increased nausea and vomiting
- changes in plasma volume
- altered gastric motility
- altered protein binding
- increased metabolic capacity of maternal liver
- stressors, and worries about the fetus
- too often diagnostic imaging (X-ray, sonography)
- others.
The anti-epileptic therapy and anti-convulsants are withdrawn when there is:
- no seizure activity during the past 2-5 years
- only a single type of seizure
- a normal EEG with treatment
- a normal neurologic exam.
Treatment:
- Folate supplementation (in the first trimester of pregnancy)
- Vitamin K supplementation (10mg/day in the third trimester of pregnancy)
- Monotherapy (only one anti-convulsant) with adjusted dosage is a successful way to handle epilepsy during pregnancy.
She should NOT stop any treatment without first consulting with her Obstetrician and Neurologist.
NO. Continue the medicine and see her neurologist.
While many anti-epilepsy medications can cause fetal damage, there are some that are perfectly safe to take while pregnant. I would never recommend going off epilepsy medication abruptly. I would recommend your daughter-in-law ask her OB/Gyn to facilitate getting her an appointment with a high risk OB also known as a Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist to sit down with her and go over her medications and give her a realistic appraisal of the risk (if any) to the baby. Certainly having epileptic seizures during pregnancy is both bad for the patient and the unborn baby. Good luck.