Treatment of facial tics in children

Facial cramps in children are some of the common cases in modern medicine, especially in children, who always have facial nerve convulsions for no reason, and boys cannot control their own behavior. So let’s find out what causes this phenomenon!

Tourette syndrome is a common childhood behavioral disorder syndrome in clinical practice, a syndrome characterized by involuntary twitching of the facial, limbs, and trunk muscles accompanied by abnormal laryngeal pronunciation and obscene language. The characteristics are that the child frequently squints, frowns, wrinkles the nose, pouts, etc.; followed by shrugging, shaking the head, twisting the neck, and involuntarily making abnormal sounds in the throat, like clearing the throat or a dry cough. A small number of children cannot control their swearing. The severity of symptoms often fluctuates. Colds and mental stress can induce and aggravate the disease. About half of the children suffer from ADHD. Over time it will affect memory and cause students to fall behind in their studies. In serious cases, students may be forced to suspend their studies for disrupting class order.

Haloperidol + Antan are the first choice for clinical treatment.

Oral administration of haloperidol should start from a small dose and increase gradually, 0.25-0.5 mg/d, gradually increasing to 3-4 mg/d. Some patients can achieve satisfactory results with a small dose such as 1 mg/d. Taking haloperidol may cause acute dystonia (such as continuous protrusion of the tongue from the mouth, spasmodic torticollis, etc.), so it is necessary to take Antan at the same time to antagonize the symptoms.

96% of patients develop the disease before the age of 11, with an average age of 5.6 years (most commonly 3 to 8 years old). The most serious period of tic development is 10 years old, and by the age of 18 to 20, tics can stop in half of the patients. If tics persist into adulthood, the severity of the tics will be significantly reduced. Most tics that persist into adulthood are long-term. Adult-onset disease is severe. This disease does not affect the patient's life span and intelligence, and drug treatment can control and alleviate the condition in more than half of the patients.

In the above article, we learned about children's facial twitching. First of all, this phenomenon does not rule out the possibility that they may have tics. If they have tics, it is very likely that children will have facial twitching. It is recommended that parents give their children timely observation and treatment.