The effects of brand-generic substitution in antiepileptic treatment
The effects of brand-generic substitution in antiepileptic treatment

Summary/Abstract: The chronic character of the disease has a significant impact on expenses borne by individual patients and by the health care system. Patients diagnosed with epilepsy need a long-term treatment, which is often expensive. In order to minimize the costs, doctors are increasingly turning to prescribing cheaper generic drugs. On the one hand, from an economic perspective, such a solution is cost-effective; on the other hand, the choice of an inadequate treatment may have serious consequences for the patient’s health. Patients using drugs with a narrow therapeutic index should be careful because of differences in bioequivalence of medicinal products. An inadequate alteration of the treatment for epilepsy, either by replacing the original drug with a generic one or by replacing one generic drug with another, may adversely affect the patient’s condition. It is important, then, that therapeutic decisions should not be guided chiefly by considerations of cost reduction for the patient, but first of all by possible future health effects.

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