Infantile chorea following abrupt withdrawal of diazepam and pentobarbital therapy

Movement disorders associated with pediatric encephalitis

New onset movement disorders are a common clinical problem in pediatric neurology and can be infectious, inflammatory, metabolic, or functional in origin. Encephalitis is one of the more important causes of new onset movement disorders, and movement disorders are a common feature (~25%) of all encephalitis. However, all encephalitides are not the same, and movement disorders are a key diagnostic feature that can help the clinician identify the etiology of the encephalitis, and therefore appropriate treatment is required. Movement disorders are a characteristic feature of autoimmune encephalitis such as anti-NMDAR encephalitis, herpes simplex virus encephalitis-induced autoimmune encephalitis, and basal ganglia encephalitis. Other rarer autoantibody-associated encephalitis syndromes with movement disorder associations include encephalitis associated with glycine receptor, DPPX, and neurexin-3 alpha autoantibodies. In addition, movement disorders can accompany acute disseminated encephalomyelitis with and without myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibodies. Extremely important infectious encephalitides that have characteristic movement disorder associations include Japanese encephalitis, dengue fever, West Nile virus, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). This chapter discusses how specific movement disorder phenomenology can aid clinician diagnostic suspicion, such as stereotypy, perseveration, and catatonia in anti-NMDAR encephalitis, dystonia-Parkinsonism in basal ganglia encephalitis, and myoclonus in SSPE. In addition, the chapter discusses how the age of the patients can influence the movement disorder phenomenology, such as in anti-NMDAR encephalitis where chorea is typical in young children, even though catatonia and akinesia is more common in adolescents and adults.

Continuous pentobarbital infusion in children is associated with high rates of complications

PURPOSE

To evaluate the incidence and severity of complications related to continuous pentobarbital (PB) infusion for sedation in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We conducted a retrospective, chart review study. All patients admitted to the PICU from January 1997 through June 1998 who received continuous IV PB infusion for sedation (n = 8) were included.

RESULTS

All patients were intubated and mechanically ventilated prior to PB infusion. PB was used only as a second line sedative after a combination of an opioid and benzodiazepine failed to achieve adequate sedation. After initiation of PB, we were able to decrease or discontinue benzodiazepines and/or opioid doses and discontinue neuromuscular blocking drugs in all patients. We observed a high incidence of complications (62.5%) related to PB or the phenobarbital treatment used for barbiturate weaning, including blood pressure instability (25%), oversedation (12.5%), drug reaction (12.5%) and neurologic sequelae (12.5%). Discontinuation of the drug was required in 25% of the cases.

CONCLUSIONS

We found continuous PB infusion to be an effective sedative for children when other drugs fail. However, we observed a high rate of clinically significant complications requiring discontinuation of the drug.