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The
Forceful Breathers
These are patients with Rett
syndrome who forcefully inhale and exhale air, sometimes continuously
and would often lose a great deal of carbon dioxide from the
bloodstream. Medical consequences are: Some of these patients
may proceed into a hypocapnic
attack. They are vulnerable to prolonged central apnoea
(cessation of breathing) and tetany, which resembles epileptic
stiffness of the limbs. These patients often exhaust their
brainstems and a few of them may go into brainstem shutdown
(the skin turns white and the body becomes floppy). Others
may just have a prolonged cessation of breathing and become
cyanosed (turn blue in the face, starting with the lips) or
have very shallow breathings that are hard to notice. There
are three breathing abnormalities in this category. They are:
hyperventilation, tachypnoea and deep breathing. This breathing
category does not respond to drug treatment, but may require
physiological means of raising the level of carbon dioxide
in the bloodstream back to normal.
The
graphs & Videos were recorded using the NeuroScope™ system
Click here to see the graph of The Forceful Breathers.
Hypocapnic attack in forceful breathers
Click
here to see the video of a Hypocapnic attack.
Click here to see
the video of a Hypocapnic treatment.
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