[Poliomyelitis and the post-polio syndrome]

In developed countries as well as in Hungary polio virus related disease disappeared completely due to the extensive administering of vaccine. As a result, young and middle-aged doctors have no experience of encountering acute polio virus infection but instead they meet its resultant impairments and disabilities. Persons who had suffered the onset of poliomyelitis 3 or 4 decades earlier, may to develop a new set of symptoms and functional declines. The criteria for post-polio syndrome were identified and its impairments and disabilities were described. It is only within the last decade that the adaptive changes in muscular tissue, insufficiently compensed denervation, together with the effects of physiotherapy, have become better known. The aim of this paper is to review the present situation concerning the struggle for keeping the polio virus in check, to give a short summary of the post-polio syndrome and to draw attention to the importance of rehabilitation.