title: Measurement of muscle tone in children with cerebellar ataxia.
abstract: An electro-mechanical device has been used to measure muscle tone in 12 children with cerebellar ataxia and in 12 healthy children matched for age and sex. All the children also had their tone assessed clinically. The machine measurement showed that six (50%) of the 12 ataxic children had hypotonia, one was hypertonic, while five had normal tone. There was significant correlation between estimation of muscle tone by the machine and by clinical examination. The machine will serve as a valuable addition to other devices already being used to measure the other motor deficits encountered in children with cerebellar disease--such as devices that measure gait ataxia, truncal balance, intention tremor and incoordination of the limbs. It is re-emphasized that assessment or confirmation of clinical signs by reliable and reproducible instrumentation, offers a more objective basis for management and follow-up of patients, than clinical testing alone, and eliminates the often-encountered inter-tester discrepancies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Paediatrics, University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu, Nigeria.
authors.forename: S O
authors.initials: SO
authors.lastname: Iloeje
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002524:Cerebellar Ataxia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D004568:Electrodiagnosis / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016555:Matched-Pair Analysis; D009129:Muscle Tonus / Q000502:physiology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results