Management of Pediatric Movement Disorders: Present and Future

Management of movement disorders in children is an evolving field. This article outlines the major categories of treatment options for pediatric movement disorders and general guidelines for their use. We review the evidence for existing therapies, which continue to lack large-scale controlled trials to guide treatment decisions. The field continues to rely on extrapolations from adult studies and lower quality evidence such as case reports and case series to guide treatment guidelines and consensus statements. Developments in new pharmaceuticals for rare diseases have begun to provide hope for those cases in which a genetic diagnosis can be made. Advances in surgical therapies such as deep brain stimulation as well as new modes of treatment such as gene therapy, epigenetic modulation, and stem cell therapy hold promise for improving outcomes in both primary and secondary causes of movement disorders. There is a critical need for larger, multicenter, controlled clinical trials to fully evaluate treatments for pediatric movement disorders.