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The Anatomy of Muscular Dystrophy

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Knowing that your child is doomed to live a life nailed in the wheelchair and can barely perform the basic functions of life is a difficult reality to accept. These are only few of the medical conditions suffered by patients of Muscular Dystrophy, also known as MD.

What is it?
Muscular Dystrophy is a genetic disorder that is characterized by progressive weakening of the body muscles and it also degenerates the skeletal muscles that control the movements. This condition is inherited and caused by wrong or missing genetic information that prevents the body from making proteins to build and maintain healthy muscles.

Symptoms
Muscular Dystrophy is quite difficult to identify during the first few years of the child’s life. In fact, the symptoms are not noticeable at all in this stage because most of the MD patients follow the normal pattern of child development. Generally the common symptoms of MD will start only to appear in time, though it varies according to the forms of MD.

In some rare cases, symptoms transpire as early as infancy while in others, symptoms will not appear until adulthood.

The first noticeable symptoms of MD include difficulty in climbing the stairs; child prefers to walk on the toes, loss of function, waddle and stumble, struggles to get up from a sitting position and finds difficulty in pushing things.

As the medical condition worsen, the MD patients will have walking difficulty, frequent falls, calf pain, Scoliosis, drooping eyelids, inability to walk, among others.

Treatment
So far, there is no specific cure for MD cases. The research for treatment is still ongoing though there are some recommendations to alleviate the patients from their medical conditions.

The most common recommendations are physical therapy, exercise and the use of orthopedic devices such as braces and wheelchairs. These can be used during early detection of the disorder as it aims to improve flexibility and mobility of the MD patients.

In severe conditions, patients may start to use other devices such as robotics to help MD children move their arms and perform the basic functions in life, ventilator to support breathing and corrective orthopedic surgery.

However, all of these options aims to improve only the quality of life for MD patients and will not lead to curing the disorder.

Resources:
http://kidshealth.org/, http://www.healthscout.com/

Cyra Miles is a freelance writer living in Abu Dhabi, UAE and her areas of interest are travel, events & holidays, health, culture & society, human interest stories and education. Her writing services include SEO writing, webpage content, article writing, blogs, essays and feature writing.

Visit her at http://www.cyramiles.com/

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EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

nice post. =)

May 23, 2009 - 12:20am

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EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

great information! :)

May 22, 2009 - 1:31am

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We value and respect our HERWriters' experiences, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice, although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.