ESPE Abstracts

Background: Turner syndrome (TS), affects approximately 1/2500 live female births. The clinical features range from a severe phenotypic character to reduction of final height and premature ovarian failure.

Objective and hypotheses: Processing of sensory information from visual, vestibular and somatokinesthetic systems is required to organize an adequate motor response aiming at gaze and posture stabilization according to the expected task and to the environmental contexts, each element of the sensory-motor chain being possibly affected in TS. This study aimed to analyze balance control specifities in TS children and adolescent girls.

Method: Twenty four patients underwent visual and otological evaluation and posturography tests. A sensory organisation tests (EquiTest, Neurocom, Clackamas, Oregon) allows to calculate a composite equilibrium score (CES) to evaluate global balance performances. In a second test, the patients were submitted to slow rotational oscillations of the support in EO and EC conditions (Maastricht Instruments, The Netherlands), and partitioned in two groups according to the stability (type 1) or instability (type 2) of balance control.

Results: TS patients were partitioned according to central nervous system (CNS) or peripheral balance disorders. Six of them were considered as CNS troubles, five as peripheral, six as mixed, and seven as without vertigo or dizziness. In five patients, a second evaluation was performed 6 months later, in order to strengthen out the evolutive characteristics of balance control impairment (more stabilized in CNS disorders and more variable in peripheral disorders). CES was low in TS, with falls in certain conditions, and type 2 recordings were recorded in 17 patients in slow rotational oscillations. Posturography performances were lower and more fixed in CNS troubles and in mixed troubles than peripheral troubles.

Conclusion: Balance control is altered in Turner patients and this has to been taken in account for prevention of the adult fracture increased risk.