Background : There are some children have sudden-onset gait disturbances of unclear causes. In such cases, most of clinicians pretend to perform series of diagnostic investigations including invasive procedures to rule out serious but rare diseases. B...
Background : There are some children have sudden-onset gait disturbances of unclear causes. In such cases, most of clinicians pretend to perform series of diagnostic investigations including invasive procedures to rule out serious but rare diseases. But from our experiences, there are very mild diseases that can cause transient gait disturbances and no need of invasive diagnostic investigations, such as the benign acute childhood myositis(BACM).
Purpose : With a clinical rarity of disease, we want to make a concern of BACM rather than a more serious, but rare diseases like Guillain-Barré syndrome. Through comparisons of clinical mani- festations and laboratory findings among another causes of gait disturbances, we tried to make a method that can differentiate BACM from other diseases to avoid unnecessary invasive procedures.
Methods : From Jan 1, 2009 to Dec 31, 2013, there were 68 patients with sudden-onset gait disturbance visited emergency department of Chungbuk National University Hospital. All of patients were admitted, and diagnosed as BACM, Guillain-Barré syndrome, transient syno- vitis, and septic arthritis. We compared clinical manifestations and laboratory findings among disease groups.
Results : There were one clinical symptom and one laboratory finding that can differentiate BACM group from other disease groups with enough statistical significance. They were upper respiratory symptoms within recent 4 weeks and aspartate aminotransferase(AST). With a cut-off value of AST 45 IU/L, the diagnostic sensitivity of BACM was 94.4%, specificity 89.6%, positive predictive value 77.3%, negative predictive value 97.7%, and accuracy 90.9%.
Conclusion : BACM is a transient phase that can cause a sudden-onset nontraumatic gait disturbance in preschool-aged children. Especially BACM is noted mainly in boys, from late winter to spring, with upper respiratory symptoms, and with fever. AST can help to make a decision to undergo some invasive procedures to rule out other causes of gait disturbance, with a cut-off value of 45 IU/L.