Recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of refractory epilepsy

The refractory epilepsy refers to the epilepsy whose seizures couldn’t be cured after using two kinds of correctly selected antiepileptic drugs which can be tolerated and enough dosage and duration of monotherapy or combination therapy.The pathogenesis of intractable epilepsy is complex, and there is no established theory at home and abroad.Recently, more and more attention has been paid to the correlation between mitochondrial dysfunction caused by oxidative stress and intractable epilepsy.Based on the summary of common treatment of refractory epilepsy and by searching the related literature at home and abroad, further investigation would be made to explore the diagnosis and treatment of intractable epilepsy theory in order to provide new strategies for diagnosis and treatment of intractable epilepsy. Key words: Refractory epilepsy; Oxidative stress; Mitochondrial dysfunction; Diagnosis and treatment strategy