dilantin and lung cancer

[Carl-B]

  My wife had an aneurism and subsequent brain surgery. She was prescribed dilantin for seizure control. About six months after her surgery she started having seizures again. The neurosurgen brought her back up to maximum dosage and she continued to have seizures so they told her to come to the hospital. They started her on intravenus dilantin and she still had seizures. After three days of this they decided to call in a specialist who took my wife off of dilantin. One week after she was able to leave the hospital she developed pleuralsy. Three weeks later she had full blown lung cancer(oat cell).Do you know of any familar cases of drug overdose of dilantin and is it possible for this type of drug to cause oat cell cancer?
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Thanks for your question.  Phenytoin (Dilantin) in supra-therapeutic dosages
will present with a number of clear neurological signs such as visual
impairment secondary to optic nystagmus, that is, oscillatory eye movements
causing poor eye fixation on targets; ataxia, that is, incoordination for
fine motor movements; dysarthria, "slurred speech"; nausea and vomiting.
All these side-effects cease when the medication is either stopped or the
dosage just diminished.
Dilantin has no correlation to lung cancer, either the "oat cell" type
or other types of lung neoplasm.  It is a medication that has been used
by tens if not hundreds of millions of patients around the world.
I hope this information is helpful.
This information is provided for general medical education purposes only.
Please consult your doctor regarding diagnostic and treatment options.