Causes of opisthotonos in infants

After a pregnant mother goes through ten months of hard work to give birth to a baby, I believe every family member hopes that the child can grow up healthy, smoothly and without worries. However, children's organs are still developing and they lack resistance to the outside world, so they are more susceptible to illness than adults. Brain diseases are more likely to affect children, and severe cases can cause lifelong damage to children. Infants' opisthotonos can tell parents and doctors what type of brain disease their children may suffer from.

Causes of opisthotonos

Opisthotonos needs timely treatment, but first you need to know what causes your baby's opisthotonos. Let’s look at the causes of opisthotonos.

1. Arnold-Chiari syndrome

The presence of opisthotonos here indicates the occurrence of hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus is characterized by an enlarged head, a thin, shiny scalp with dilated veins, and underdeveloped neck muscles. In infants, symptoms include high-pitched crying, abnormal leg muscle tone, loss of appetite, vomiting, stiff neck, irritability, and noisy breathing. The sucking reflex is weakened.

2. Meningitis

In this infection, opisthotonos are accompanied by other signs of meningeal irritation, including nuchal rigidity, positive Brudzinski and Kernig signs, and hyperreflexia. Meningitis may also present with signs of inflammation due to the infection (moderate to high fever with chills and malaise) and signs of increased intracranial pressure (headache, vomiting, and eventually optic disk edema). Other features include irritability, photophobia, diplopia, deafness, and palsy of other cranial nerves. The decline in consciousness may progress to seizure and coma.

3. Subarachnoid hemorrhage

In this disorder, opisthotonos may be present with signs of meningeal irritation, such as nuchal stiffness, positive Brudzinski and Kernig signs, and attention should be paid to signs of hemorrhage, such as severe headache, hemiparesis or hemiparesis, aphasia, and photophobia, along with other visual problems. Increased intracranial pressure, changes in breathing patterns, seizures, and vomiting may also occur. The patient's consciousness rapidly deteriorates, leading to coma, with alternating decerebrate rigidity and opisthotonos.

4. Tetanus

This life-threatening infection can cause opisthotonos. Initially, trismus occurs. Eventually muscle spasms may affect the abdomen, producing rigidity, opisthotonos in the back, or spasms in the face. Spasms may affect the respiratory muscles, causing respiratory distress, tachycardia, sweating, hyperreflexia of deep tendon reflexes, and possibly seizures.

From the above description, it can be seen that opisthotonos in infants is really terrible. When parents are caring for their babies, they often ignore the dangerous signals conveyed to us by the baby's every move. By the time the problem becomes serious, the best time for treatment has been missed, causing indelible harm to the child and the family. Therefore, parents must take good care of their children.