Antiseizure medicines: selection, adverse effects and monitoring — branching viva

Outpatient clinic: a ten-year-old boy with newly diagnosed focal epilepsy, started on levetiracetam two weeks ago, whose parents report new irritability and aggression, and whose seizures are now controlled. The examiner asks: classify the drug by spectrum and mechanism, explain the behavioural adverse effect and its management — then branches to the spectrum rule (why carbamazepine would also work for focal but worsens absence), the valproate pregnancy prevention programme applied to a female adolescent, and the lamotrigine rash scenario that tests the slow-titration rule.