Abstracts

Rationale: The ketogenic diet has been proven to be an effective method in treating pharmacologically intractable epilepsy. This study, aims to assess side effect profiles associated with different ketogenic diet formulas. Having such data will help predict, and avoid different complications that might arise with ketogenic diet treatment in patients with pharmacologically intractable epilepsy. Methods: We conducted a retrospective chart review of all patients who received ketogenic diet therapy, followed from April of 2005 through January 2011 in the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at Children's Mercy Hospital (N=118) with an age ranging between 4 months, and 20 years old at the time of diet initiation. Ketogenic diet ratio ranged between 1:1 to 4:1 fat to protein and carbohydrate. Ketocal formula was used in 55 patients, RCF formula in 19 patients, and oral ketogenic menu diet in 58 patients. 14 patients had a combination of more than one formula. We monitored Gastrointestinal (GI), Renal, Neurological, and metabolic side effects in different diet formulas Results: Data from 118 patients were collected, and was found that none of the patients had side effects serious enough to terminate the diet; however a number of patients had different side effects as outlined in this table: Conclusions: In our study we found that side effects were minor, transient and did result in discontinuation of the ketogenic diet in any of the patients. It was also noticed that gastrointestinal side effects are the most common. Food menu diet seems to have the least metabolic and renal side effects. RCF formula resulted in significantly less gastrointestinal and neurological side effects comparing to Ketocal and food menu.