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Neurology (Expert Forum)
tbi & spasticity
This forum is for questions and support regarding neurology issues such as: Alzheimer's Disease, ALS, Autism, Brain Cancer, Cerebral Palsy, Chronic Pain, Epilepsy, Fibromyalgia, Headaches, MS, Neuralgia, Neuropathy, Parkinson's Disease, RSD, Sleep Disorders, Stroke, Traumatic Brain Injury.
tbi & spasticity
by dona__0__0, Jul 21, 1998 12:00AM
My son, age 24, had some abnormal tone after a very, very severe closed head injury. He came home a quadraplegic, but was slowly learning to move and get control of his muscles. About 9 months after his accident, he suddenly developed horrible spasms and was unable to do any therapy or sleep because of severe rigidity and pain. Tests were run to determine the cause, but nothing could be found. These spasms started 2 hours after he made a major breakthrough in alertness and cognitive skills. As he continued to dramatically improve in these areas, his physical condition worsened as fast. Is it possible the cognitive progress and awareness caused the severe spasticity? I know this is a hard question to answer, I was just wondering if you had ever heard of a case like this because most changes in spasticty are caused by something. He received a baclofen pump implant 2 mos. ago and is doing fairly well with it. Thanks!
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Dear Donna:
I am sorry to learn about your son's unfortunate problem. It is likely that your son has what is termed "diffuse axonal injury", a form of head injury in which there is shearing or tearing of deep brain tissue. In this type of injury, tests such as brain scans can be misleadingly normal, and patients can have very major cognitive and motor (i.e. spaticity, dystonia or tremor) deficits. These motor problems have their own time course after acute nervous sysyem injury - they may be delayed in onset for several weeks or even months. I am glad to read about your son's improving cognition; this should have no direct effects on the motor problem.
If spasticity is indeed the major problem, the baclofen pump may be the right treatment.
