[Somatosensory disorders in patients with extrapyramidal pathology: the effect of a stereotaxic intervention]

The authors compared somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEP) recorded in 16 patients with infantile cerebral paralysis (ICP), 16 patients with parkinsonism (P), 18 patients with torticollis (T), and 15 healthy individuals. Structural changes of SSEP were found in all patients with ICP and in most patients with P and T. The structural changes of SSEP in these patients were mainly associated with the absence or suppression of one or two components of SSEP of a healthy individual. It is assumed that one and the same pathological process underlies these three diseases, but it differs in the degree of manifestation in each one. Two groups of patients with parkinsonism which differed in age were distinguished, which represent, probably, two different pathological processes. Certain normalization of the muscular tonus and inhibition of hyperkinesia in most patients as the result of stereotaxic operation was not attended by normalization of the SSEP structure.