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Query: UMLS:C0042571 (vertigo)
 7,148 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Vertigo in children is rarer than in adults and the examiner in cases showing these symptoms must rely on the parents' or relatives' observations and details. Besides the equilibrium disorders caused by hereditary malabsorption or lesions in the peripheral or central vestibular structures, e.g. ototoxic drugs, tumours in the brain, meningitis, encephalitis, otitis, labyrinthine fistulas or head trauma, we only known of typical diseases, associated with vertigo, that develop during childhood. These are: so-called benign paroxysmal vertigo of childhood, benign paroxysmal torticollis, basilar migraine, spasmus nutans, visual-cliff phenomenon, and kinetosis. Careful examinations are necessary to differentiate these illnesses from vestibular epilepsy, brain tumours, and hereditary episodic vertigo. Neuro-otologic examination in children, especially small children, is a kind of "stepchild" in ENT departments. The reasons are the time-consuming examination necessary in the case of children and by problems connected with a plethora of troublesome individual tests. Additional difficulties arise in cases of sensory, mental, and other impairments. - The paper gives an overview of vestibular disturbances during childhood and diagnostic procedures for determination by means of Frenzel glasses, electronystagmography, cranio-corpography, and posturography.
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PMID:[Equilibrium disorders and their diagnosis in childhood]. 174 79

Nystagmus is an involuntary, periodic eye movement caused by a slow drift of fixation which is followed by a fast refixation saccade (jerk nystagmus) or a slow movement back to fixation (pendular nystagmus). In childhood most cases are benign forms of nystagmus: idiopathic infantile, ocular or latent nystagmus. They arise at the age of 3 months, without oscillopsia and show the absence of the physiologic opto-kinetic nystagmus. A full ophthalmologic evaluation is all that is needed in most cases: albinism, macular or optic nerve hypoplasia and congenital retinal dystrophies are the most common forms of ocular nystagmus. Idiopathic infantile nystagmus can be hereditary, the most common and best analyzed form being a mutation of the FRMD7 gene on chromosome Xq26.2. The mutation shows a mild genotype-phenotype correlation. In all female carriers the opto-kinetic nystagmus is absent and half had mild nystagmus. Latent nystagmus is part of the infantile esotropia syndrome and shows the unique feature of change of direction when the fixing eye changes: it is always beating to the side of the fixing eye. There is no cure for infantile nystagmus but therapeutic options include magnifying visual aids or eye muscle surgery at the age of 6-8 y in patients with head turn. Less than 20% of childhood nystagmus are acquired and need further neurological and imaging work-up. Alarming signs and symptoms are: onset after the age of 4 months, oscillopsia, dissociated (asymmetric) nystagmus, preserved opto-kinetic nystagmus, afferent pupillary defect, papilloedema and neurological symptoms like vertigo and nausea. The most common cause is due to pathology of the anterior optic pathway (e.g. optic nerve gliomas). It shows the same clinical feature of dissociated nystagmus as spasmus nutans but has a higher frequency as in INO. Other forms of acquired nystagmus are due to brainstem, cerebellar or metabolic diseases.
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PMID:Infantile and acquired nystagmus in childhood. 2245 7