Intermittent Diazepam versus Continuous Phenobarbital to Prevent Recurrence of Febrile Seizures: A Randomized Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVE: Febrile seizure is the most common neurologic problem in children between 3 months to 5 years old. Two to five percent of children aged less than five yr old will experience it at least one time. This type of seizure is age dependent and its recurrence rate is about 33% overalls and 50% in children less than one yr old. The prophylactic treatment is still controversial, so we conducted a randomized controlled clinical trial to find out the effectiveness of continuous phenobarbital versus intermittent diazepam for febrile seizure. MATERIALS & METHODS: This clinical trial was conducted in the Department of Pediatric Neurology, Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran between March 2008 and October 2010. All children from 6 month to 5 yr old referred to Amirkola Children’s Hospital, Babol, Iran were enrolled in the study. Children with febrile seizure that had indication for prophylaxis but did not receive any prophylaxis previously were enrolled in the study. For prophylactic anti convulsion therapy, patients were divided randomly in two groups. One group received continuous phenobarbital and another treated with intermittent diazepam whenever the children experienced an episode of febrile illness for up to one year after their last convulsion. RESULTS: Of all 145 studied cases, the recurrent rate in children under prophylaxis with diazepam was 11/71 and in phenobarbital group was 17/74. There was no significant difference in the recurrence rate in both groups. CONCLUSION: There was no significant difference in the effectiveness of phenobarbital and diazepam in prevention of recurrent in febrile seizure and we think that in respect of lower complication rate in diazepam administration, it cloud be better choice than phenobarbital.