Evaluation of demographic, clinical and paraclinical features of children with Guillain-Barré syndrome

Abstract

Introduction: Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an acute polyneuropathy accompanied by muscle weakness, myalgia, and bulbar involvement. Objectives: We evaluated demographic, clinical and paraclinical features of children with this disease. Patients and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the data of 83 patients with GBS were studied. All data about age, gender, place of residence (urban, rural), season of infection, history of infection or vaccination in the last month, clinical demonstrations and spinal magnetic resonance imaging findings with contrast, electromyography (EMG), nerve conduction velocity (NCV), cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), C-reactive protein (CRP) analysis was analyzed. Results: In this study, the highest incidence of GBS was in the summer (30.12%). Regarding clinical symptoms, 54.21% of patients were unable to walk, and around14.45 % of cases had positive Gowers’ sign. Additionally, 27.71% of patients reported pain, since 7.22% of them had severe respiratory distress with the need for mechanical ventilation. In patients who underwent EMG-NCV, findings were in favor of GBS in most cases (89.83%). In lumbar puncture, 53% of patients had normal CSF. Most patients (75.9%) had an erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) below 30 mm/h. CRP of most patients (83.33%) was less than 10 mg/L. Conclusion: The predominant clinical symptoms of patients with GBS are the inability to walk, imbalance, positive Gowers’ sign, pain and respiratory distress, since ESR and CRP less than 30 and 10 mg/L are helpful, respectively.

Keywords

• guillain-barré syndrome
• polyneuropathy
• acute flaccid paralysis