Pediatria pre prax 4/2019
Differential diagnosis of hypotonia in children
Hypotonia is a relatively common clinical symptom in the daily practice of pediatricians. It is often a demanding task to establish the cause of this pathological state. The causes of hypotonia can be acquired or congenital disorders, genetically determined neurological impairments, metabolic or other diseases. In clinical practice, a hypotonic newborn and/or infant is described as a “floppy infant”. The first symptom of hypotonia may be delay in the child‘s psycho-motoric development. Although hypotonia is a generally well-known problem, the diagnosis is commonly established later in life resulting in the delay of adequate treatment. In this paper, we present a complex and up-to-date approach to the hypotonic child from neonatal to toddler age and a rational differential-diagnostic algorithm that, as we believe, may help pediatricians speed up the detection of the cause of hypotonia and may enable patients to receive earlier optimal treatment.
Keywords: hypotonia, differential diagnosis of hypotonia, floppy infant, psycho-motoric development, algorithm
