What treatments are available to a person who has absence seizures?

What treatments are available to a person who has absence seizures?

Charles Ribak, Ph.D. (Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology, UC Irvine School of Medicine) gives expert video advice on: What should I do if I think I'm going to have an absence seizure?; What should I do if I see someone having an absence seizure? and more...

For the child with absence seizures (absence seizures are also referred to as petit mal), these seizures are best treated by ethosuxomide-type drugs. The one that's out there on the market is name brand Zarontin, and this seems to at least decrease the frequency of these absence seizures. The best thing, really, is to keep an eye on your child when they are under your supervision at home while they're awake, and make sure they don't get involved in doing activities where they could injure themselves if they did have a seizure. And also, I would continue to maintain strong lines of communications with their school teacher and discuss, on a weekly basis, whether or not the teacher has noticed the seizures are less frequent, based on the use of this medicine that they're on.