Refractory Seizures

Hillary Haydon Greatting, MS, DVM, DACVIM, Washington State University

Tom Jukier, DVM, Washington State University

ArticleLast Updated February 20171 min readPeer Reviewed
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*Idiopathic epilepsy can be subclassified into genetic epilepsy (identified genetic background), suspected genetic epilepsy (breed prevalence >2%), or epilepsy of unknown cause (nature unknown with no structural disease).5 Diagnosis of idiopathic epilepsy can be suggested if there is a history of 2 unprovoked epileptic seizures occurring 24 hours apart, the patients age at epileptic seizure onset is between 6 months and 6 years, interictal physical and neurologic examinations are unremarkable (except for antiepileptic-druginduced neurologic abnormalities and postictal neurologic deficits), and no clinically significant abnormalities are found on minimum database blood tests and urinalysis.6 However, diagnosis is ideally made on exclusion (ie, normal brain MRI and CSF analysis) or further supported by electroencephalography.5

AED = antiepileptic drug