What is spastic squint and how to treat it

  Oblique neck is a persistent tilt of the head to one side, with the tip of the affected mastoid process close to the sternoclavicular joint. Due to the different causes, there are 8 types of squibs. They are myelomeningeal, bony, oculogenic, reflex, inflammatory, spastic and paralytic. The first two types are congenital and the last six types are secondary.  There are four types of spastic squint: 1. Rotation type, i.e. the head rotates spasmodically or clonically around the axial side of the body. 2.  2.Backward tilting type, the head is tilted backward spasmodically or clonically, the face is tilted up to the sky, and the cervical vertebrae are bowed forward.  3.Forward bending type, the head is spasmodically or paroxysmally bent forward toward the forehead.  4.Lateral contracture type, the head deviates from the longitudinal axis to the left, to the right, and in severe cases, the ears, temporal area and shoulders are close or close together, and often accompanied by the phenomenon of ipsilateral shoulder upward beckoning, closer to the distance of the shoulder.  Spastic squint is a syndrome in which the main symptom is the twisting or paroxysmal tilting of the head to one side caused by the paroxysmal involuntary contraction of the neck muscles. This abnormal involuntary movement of the head muscles is particularly aggravated when the patient is in public or in a stressful situation, making it impossible for the patient to carry out his or her work properly. About 75% of patients have specific pain associated with cervical muscle spasm episodes, such as headache and neck pain; about 1/3 of patients have spasms of the cheek, eyelid, arm or trunk, and about 25% have standing or motor hand tremor. These symptoms cause a lot of pain in patients’ lives.  The pathogenesis of spastic squint is unclear, and it is thought to be related to genetics, trauma and abnormal vestibular function with compression of the collateral nerves by blood vessels.  For the treatment of spastic squint, internal medicine adopts the method of local intramuscular injection of botulinum toxin and oral anticholinergic drugs, but after long-term medication, side effects that are not tolerated by patients or reduced efficacy often occur; surgery mostly uses the method of cutting the affected muscle groups in the neck and cutting the nerve roots that innervate the neck muscle groups, and microvascular decompression has certain efficacy in the treatment of spastic squint.