Monday Pharmaceutical Mystery: October 22

A customer's wife comes to the pharmacy to pick up his medication. She says he just got out of the hospital and these medications are new. She asks for additional drug counseling, and you explain what each drug is for. She tells you that he had a stroke and in the hospital he was getting l

evetiracetam (Keppra, UCB). She wants to know why you didn’t fill the

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evetiracetam since her neighbor is also on that drug and she was told never to stop taking it suddenly.

Mystery: Why didn’t the discharge prescriptions include

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evetiracetam? Did the doctor make a mistake?

Solution: The

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evetiracetam was a preventative medicine after the stroke. It is often stopped when the patient shows no seizure activity. Just because he was on it in the hospital, does not mean he needs to be on it at home. In this particular case, it is okay to stop taking it suddenly.