Spasticity or reversible muscle hypertonia?

Spasticity or reversible muscle hypertonia?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE The increase in resistance to passive muscle stretch in a paretic limb due to an upper motor neurone lesion is often referred to as muscle spasticity. However, this terminology is inaccurate and does not take into account the complex pathogenesis of the condition or describe the factors that contribute to the clinically observed changes in muscle tone. In this report we...

Commentary on "spasticity or reversible muscle hypertonia?".

Spasticity and Its Contribution to Hypertonia in Cerebral Palsy

Spasticity is considered an important neural contributor to muscle hypertonia in children with cerebral palsy (CP). It is most often treated with antispasticity medication, such as Botulinum Toxin-A. However, treatment response is highly variable. Part of this variability may be due to the inability of clinical tests to differentiate between the neural (e.g., spasticity) and nonneural (e.g., so...

Spasticity and spastic dystonia: the two faces of velocity-dependent hypertonia.

BACKGROUND Spasticity and spastic dystonia are two separate phenomena of the upper motor neuron syndrome. Spasticity is clinically defined by velocity-dependent hypertonia and tendon jerk hyperreflexia due to the hyper-excitability of the stretch reflex. Spastic dystonia is the inability to relax a muscle leading to a spontaneous tonic contraction. Both spasticity and spastic dystonia are prese...

Shock Waves in the Treatment of Muscle Hypertonia and Dystonia

Since 1997, focused shock waves therapy (FSWT) has been reported to be useful in the treatment of muscle hypertonia and dystonia. More recently, also radial shock wave therapy (RSWT) has been successfully used to treat muscle hypertonia. The studies where FSWT and RSWT have been used to treat muscle hypertonia and dystonia are reviewed in this paper. The more consistent and long lasting results...