In Reply.—Drs Giroud and Dumas state that carbamazepine is very effective in atypical febrile convulsions. Their publication1 is not in an easily accessible journal so that we have no information about drug levels or actual rate of recurrence nor do we know if carbamazepine was compared with other treatments such as phenobarbital sodium or a placebo group. In our study, we did not find that carbamazepine was effective in simple or complex febrile convulsions at any age.
The other article2 (actually a letter to the editor) stated that carbamazepine was effective in phenobarbital failures. Camfield and colleagues3 who stated the opposite view replied to that letter. I can only repeat their criticism that, in fact, 43% of Giroud and Dumas' patients had recurrent convulsions while on carbamazepine which, in earlier studies, is about the rate of recurrence without treatment.4 In our paper, 47% of patients who were treated