• J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Mar 2004

    Coexistent blepharospasm and hemifacial spasm: overlapping pathophysiologic mechanism?

    • E-K Tan, L-L Chan, and K-K Koh.
    • Department of Neurology, Singapore General Hospital, Republic of Singapore. grntek@sgh.com.sg
    • J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. 2004 Mar 1; 75 (3): 494-6.

    Background/AimBlepharospasm (BEB) and hemifacial spasm (HFS) appear to be distinct disorders. Clinical characteristics of coexistent BEB and HFS have not been examined. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence, clinical, and imaging features of coexistent BEB among a cohort of HFS patients and controls.ResultsAmong 665 study subjects, nine (5.5%) of the 164 consecutive HFS patients had coexistent BEB, significantly higher than age and gender matched controls (0/501, 0%) without neurological diseases (p<0.0001). The mean age of the nine patients was 61.4 (SD 9.9) (range 51-72), consisting of 88.9% women, and 66.7% had left sided HFS, similar to HFS patients without BEB. Six (66.7%) reported BEB symptoms at a mean of 0.8 years after HFS onset, one before, and onset was undetermined in two patients. Advanced magnetic resonance imaging and angiography revealed neurovascular compression of the ipsilateral side of HFS, without any basal ganglia lesions.ConclusionsBEB occurred more frequently in HFS patients, suggesting changes in the brainstem blink reflex circuitry could play a modulatory role in certain at-risk individuals resulting in the coexistence of these movement disorders.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…