TY - JOUR T1 - Should children on prolonged antiepileptic drug therapy undergo DEXA scanning to assess bone mineral density? JF - Archives of Disease in Childhood JO - Arch Dis Child SP - 92 LP - 95 DO - 10.1136/archdischild-2020-319695 VL - 106 IS - 1 AU - Milind Girish AU - Aman Mehan AU - Ashwin Venkatesh Y1 - 2021/01/01 UR - http://adc.bmj.com/content/106/1/92.abstract N2 - A 9-year-old boy presents with a distal radial fracture following a fall from playground climbing equipment. Four years previously, subsequent to two episodes of generalised seizures, he was diagnosed with epilepsy and prescribed an ongoing long-term treatment of sodium valproate which has allowed effective seizure control. You have heard that antiepileptic medications have adverse effects on bone health, and wonder if he should have had bone mineral density (BMD) measurements to assess for that risk.This critically appraised topic therefore aims to assess whether the current evidence base is supportive of routine screening for low BMD after extended therapy and if so, after what duration.Should children on prolonged antiepileptic drug therapy (population) undergo dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scanning (intervention) to assess BMD (outcome)?Pubmed and Embase were searched in January 2020 with (epilepsy OR epileptic OR convulsive OR convulsant) AND (monitor OR screen OR surveillance OR DEXA OR Dual energy x-ray absorptiometry OR densitometry) AND (osteoporosis OR osteopenia OR osteopaenia OR bone mineral density OR fracture), yielding 334 studies and 314 studies, respectively. Cochrane library was searched with the search terms (epilepsy OR epileptic OR convulsive OR convulsant) AND (osteoporosis OR osteopenia OR osteopaenia OR bone mineral density OR fracture), yielding 72 studies. Within this search, 30 relevant studies were identified, 6 of which are included in this review (table 1).View this table:In this windowIn a new windowTable 1 Bone mineral density in epileptic children on AEDsCommentaryAED therapy has been correlated to reduced BMD within both adult1 and paediatric cohorts.2–8 … ER -