6 research outputs found
Consecutive Eyeball Pressure Tests Reflect Clinically Relevant Vagal Dysfunction and Recovery in a Patient With Guillain-Barré-Syndrome With Tenacious Cardiac Dysautonomia
Cardiac dysautonomia is a potentially life-threatening complication of Guillain-Barré
syndrome (GBS). Proper and prompt recognition of patients at risk and subsequent
intensive care unit (ICU) monitoring are mandatory to prevent fatal outcome. Eyeball
pressure testing (EP) has been suggested as an easy applicable bedside test for vagal
overreactivity in GBS and thus identifying patients at risk. Yet, there is only sparse
follow-up data concerning the course of EP findings in GBS. We report a 25 years-old
male patient with GBS who underwent consecutive EP (n = 11) during his ICU stay over
a period of 11 weeks. The series of tests performed in this patient (and corresponding
clinical events) show that EP data might represent an approximation of vagal dysfunction
and vagal recovery in GBS. Interestingly, we observed a much longer duration of
pathological EP compared to a previous report. The tenacious cardiac dysautonomia in
this patient necessitated long-term application of a transvenous temporary pacemaker