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Essay On Syncope

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Introduction: Orthostatic symptoms are common in children and adolescents such that 15% experience syncope once in their teenage years.1 A comprehensive history, physical examination, bedside orthostatic testing and an ECG are usually sufficient for diagnosis combined with prevention measures for postural intolerance and reassurance being sufficient in most cases.2-4 Many patients with orthostatic intolerance (OI) have limitations of daily activities with reduced school attendance and impaired quality of life.5
A subset of children with OI may have an underlying disorder (autoimmune condition, mitochondrial insufficiency, diabetes mellitus etc.) and thus diagnosis can be elusive and expensive.6 Syncope is obvious and readily recognized to the extent that patients are frequently evaluated in an emergency room and office setting. Clinical characteristics are described in children with syncope but literature is limited in describing those many patients who present with symptoms other than syncope.7,8 We studied the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of children and adolescents with OI who had autonomic dysfunction based on head up tilt table test (HUTT).
Materials and methods
From November 2010 to June 2012, we obtained medical records of patients with OI and HUTT. Our institutional review board approved this study. We collected demographic and clinical data together with physiological data in Microsoft Excel sheet (Microsoft Office 2010). Data also …show more content…

Fisher exact test compared the physiological data and utilized a non-parametric Mann-Whitney test to compare continuous variables. We utilized the Mantel Haenszel for adjusted three-way contingency testing. Type I error rate of 5% was accepted as being of statistical significance. STATA (v.12, College station) statistical software performed all

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