Clinical approach to a floppy infant

A floppy infant

Introduction: Infant botulism is a relatively uncommon but potentially life threatening cause of a septic appearing or lethargic infant. Case Report: A 6­week­old male infant presented to the emergency department with a history of poor feeding and fever for several days. His parents reported that he had been “more sleepy than usual” and had a weak cry. He had not passed any stool for five days....

Clinical Approach to the Floppy Child

The pre-, periand postnatal history is important. Enquire about the quality and quantity of fetal movements, breech presentation and the presence of either polyor oligohydramnios. The incidence of breech presentation is higher in fetuses with neuromuscular disorders as turning requires adequate fetal mobility. Documentation of birth trauma, birth anoxia, delivery complications, low cord pH and ...

Floppy Infant Syndrome: Overview

Floppy infants exhibit poor control of movement, delayed motor skills, and hypotonic motor movement patterns. Weak infants always have hypotonia, but hypotonia may exist without weakness. Some indications of CNS abnormality are because of poor state of alertness, lack of response to visual and auditory stimuli, inability to manage co-ordinated functions like swallowing and sucking noted that th...

The floppy infant: evaluation of hypotonia.

Hypotonia is characterized by reduced resistance to passive range of motion in joints versus weakness, which is a reduction in the maximum muscle power that can be generated. (Dubowitz, 1985; Crawford, 1992; Martin, 2005) Based on strong research evidence, central hypotonia accounts for 60% to 80% of cases of hypotonia, whereas peripheral hypotonia is the cause in about 15% to 30% of cases. Dis...

A rational approach to the patient with floppy/lax eyelids.