[Selecting the first drug in children and adolescents with epilepsy: evidence versus personal experience].

: A first antiepileptic drug in children and adolescents can be selected at random, under the influence of the promotional strategies of pharmaceutical companies, based on the clinical trials that lead to its commercialisation, with the conclusions from meta-analyses, on evidence-based medicine, on open studies conducted after commercialisation, on expert consensus guidelines or based on personal experience. After reviewing all these procedures, the author deems personal experience to be the ideal method, provided that it involves a broad, long personal experience based on a preferential dedication to the basic, clinical, neurophysiological, pharmacological and therapeutic aspects of epilepsy.