Search

We aimed to evaluate patients with acute ataxia and to determine the warning clinical factors in the early prediction of neurological emergencies.Patients with a history of balance and gait coordination disorder and clinically diagnosed as acute ataxia in pediatric emergency department were included in the study. As a result of final diagnosis, the characteristics of patients with and without clinically urgent neurological pathology (CUNP) were compared. CUNP was defined as any nervous system disorder requiring early diagnosis and prompt medical or surgical treatment and/or intensive care unit admission to prevent disabling or life-threatening evolution.Eighty-eight patients with a median age of 5 years were included in the study (37 [42%] patients with CUNP and 51 [58%] without CUNP). In the CUNP group, the median age of patients and symptom duration were significantly higher (P 0.001 and P = 0.011, respectively). The most common etiologies were acute post/parainfectious cerebellar ataxias (n = 40 [45.4%]), acute cerebellitis (n = 9 [10.2%]), and Guillain-Barré syndrome (n = 8 [9%]). Hyporeflexia/areflexia and dysmetria were associated with a higher risk of CUNP. Headache, loss of consciousness, and visual dysfunction were the findings appearing exclusively in patients with CUNP.The most common etiologies in acute ataxia are benign and transient, whereas life-threatening conditions may occur rarely and may require urgent intervention. Older age; prolonged symptom duration; focal neurological deficits such as hemiparesis, hyporeflexia, and visual impairment; and nonspecific findings such as loss of consciousness and headache are the most striking "red flags" of a potential neurological emergency and should alert clinicians to CUNP.

Aims: The aim of this study was to assess the neurological aspects of patients who presented to the pediatric neurology outpatient clinic with the complaint of speech retardation. Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed on the data of the patients who underwent treatment for speech retardation between February-October 2022 at the pediatric neurology outpatient clinic of Dr. Ali Kemal Belviranlı Obstetrics and Pediatrics Hospital and Konya City Hospital. Results: The study included 149 patients with a mean age of 41.1+16.2 months, 74.5% of the patients were male. It was revealed that 8.7% of the children had a history of prematurity, 16.1% had a family member with speech retardation. In electroencephalography, epileptic disorders were found in 2.6% of the patients, psychiatric disorders (8.7% autism) in 16.7%, hearing loss in 0.7%, developmental retardation in the isolated language area in 75.8%, and global development retardation in 24.2%. Brain magnetic resonance imaging showed an abnormality of 3.3%. Furthermore, 52.3% of our patients were found to be deficient in stimuli, while 59.7% used intensive media. Conclusions: In terms of early diagnosis and treatment of speech retardation and accompanying pathologies, the diagnostic approach in children brought in due to speech retardation is critical.

The aim of this study is to evaluate our patients with the newly developed international severity score for FMF (ISSF) and make comparisons with the literature.This cross-sectional study included patients with FMF, were between 6 months and 18 years old, and were using colchicine/colchicine+IL-1 inhibitor for at least 6 months. The patients were classified as mild, intermediate, and severe based on their scores between 1 and 10. In addition to scoring, those who have additional pathological or silent mutation were compared based on these classifications.Our patients consist of 88 women 72 men total 160. The mean age, age of onset, and age of diagnosis were 12 ± 4.3, 4.9 ± 3.7, and 7.5 ± 4 years, respectively, and the mean diagnostic delay was 2.6 ± 3years. When our large patient population is evaluated with ISSF, the disease severity is mostly intermediate. According to ISSF, mild, intermediate, and severe diseases were 21.3%, 70.5%, and 8.1%, respectively. The duration of attacks shorten with increasing age (p0.05), and there is an increase in the involvement of other organs during the attacks among patients older than 7 years.ISSF appears as a suitable and effective tool for the physicians in the follow-up of the disease severity in pediatric FMF patients. Key Points • Our article is the first study to evaluate ISSF performance in the pediatric population. • International severity score for FMF (ISSF) appears as a suitable and effective tool for the physicians in the follow-up of the disease severity in pediatric FMF patients. • We think that the addition of pathogenic mutations and inheritance model to the ISSF scoring system as important determinants of disease severity, especially when comparing different patients, can be evaluated in future studies.