Evidence-Based Selection of Antiepileptic Drugs During Pregnancy: A Narrative Review of Safety and Efficacy

Pregnancy is the period of time when a fetus develops inside a woman's uterus. When counting from the last menstrual cycle through delivery, a pregnancy typically lasts around 40 weeks, or slightly over 9 months. Pregnancy is divided into three trimesters, as described by healthcare professionals. First trimester: from conception to 12 weeks; second trimester: from 13 to 28 weeks; third trimester: from 29 to 40 weeks. Seizures are a defining feature of the illness, however not all seizures are caused by epilepsy, such as febrile seizures or seizures brought on by drugs. The multilevel categorization of epilepsies was developed to facilitate categorizing epilepsy in varied clinical contexts. There are three types of seizures: those with undetermined onset, generalized onset, and focal onset. The second level is epilepsy type, which introduces the new categories of generalized epilepsy, focal epilepsies, and unknown. A variety of seizure forms, including absence, myoclonic, atonic, tonic, and tonic-clonic seizures, can occur in generalized epilepsies. An epilepsy syndrome diagnosis comes in third place. An epilepsy syndrome is a collection of symptoms that includes seizure types, EEG patterns, and imaging characteristics that frequently co-occur. This review underwent a narrative evaluation, for which papers from the Cochrane library, PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science were gathered. Epilepsy is treated with antiepileptic medications (AEDs). There is evidence that suggests some antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) increase the chance of congenital malformation and induce teratology. The risk of malformation is increased by medications including carbamazepine, phenobarbital, phenytoin, topiramate, and valproate, but not by lamotrigine, gabapentin, levetiracetam, oxcarbazepine, primidone, or zonisamide. Lacosamide, Eslicarbazepine, Clonazepam, Clobazam, and Rivaracetam did not either.