Conference Today

So we had a conference today about 7 cases of Kyphoscoliosis in Lateral Gaze Palsy reported in Iran between the years 1996 - 2000.

Lateral Gaze Palsy is a rare disease which was only recognised recently (1970 I think). So far there have been only 62(?) reported cases in the world. Most of which have been found to be localized in Middle Eastern countries (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Tunisia(?)).

In lateral gaze palsy, the patient is unable to move his eyes sideways, i.e. towards left side or right side. The patient however can move the eyes in the vertical directions, i.e upwards and downwards. It has been found to be associated with Chromosome 19 mutations.

Kyphosis is an exaggerated forward bending of the spine. Whereas scoliosis is the exaggerated sideways bend of the spine. Kyphoscoliosis is a combination of the two together (forward and sideways bend).

All the 7 cases happened to be related to each other because of the extensive inter-family marriages. Lateral gaze palsy is known to be of autosomal recessive type of inheritance. This means that the parents of the affected do not have the disease do not have the disease but are only carriers. And only when two carriers come together can the disease be inherited by their offsprings.

One of the cases, was misdiagnosed as a condition called Torticollis, because lateral gaze palsy was that uncommon. Torticollis is a condition where the patient is unable to move his head to one side, due to a defect in the muscle called sterno-cleido-mastoid. The kid that was mis-diagnosed was actually operated on for torticollis when she was a little baby.

Anyways, the seminar was pretty good and given by Dr. Farid GhasemZadeh Orthopedic Surgeon in Iranian Hospital-Dubai. The 7 reported cases were the cases that he came across during his residency period in Iran.