Hey guys,
Just a little something I found interesting...We had to give a presentation to ward 2 on a neurological area of interest. We chose 'conversion syndrome'. This is a psychological condition which manifests as neurolgical symptoms. Basically it's usually triggered by a traumatic event or stressful period, and the patient can present similar to a spinal injury or stroke. The weird thing is, the patient has 'real' symptoms. They are not putting it on nor imagining their deficit. There is no organic reason for the symptoms, but they do in fact lose innervation of ceratain muscles. The treatment involved is often a bit 'creative', in that the effects of physiotherapy and medical intervention are over-exaggerated - i.e "These foot mobs are really effective in your particular condition, most patients find they can begin to walk after about half an hour", or "We've found out what is wrong with you, it's a condition called X and rest assured, it usually resolves spontaneously within a couple of hours". These patients often end up in Ward 2 along with other strokes and get similar treatment, only psychological counselling is almost always needed as well.
Hope you enjoyed that!
dani
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Hey dan,
I saw a guy with this when i was on my ortho inpts prac... he presented as you'd expect a spinal injury (absolutely no movement of his LL's). Once the doctors diagnosed it as conversion disorder our physios explained to us what is was and said that everyone should try to 'catch him out' - which sounds terrible but she meant that sometimes with conversion disorder they 'forget' about their problems when they're distracted and will walk, etc. so instead of asking to move his ankle (muscle testing) ask him to stand up or pick something off the floor... Which made sense. He ended up going to a psych unit i think and interestingly he told the doctors he'd had the same thing before in his home country (forget which one) and he got better after he layed in bed for 6 months!!! We won't go there....haha
xox
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