Psychogenic limp in a child

Abstract

A 10-year-old child presented with a limp for 9 months. The child was keeping his right knee extended and foot in the equinus position. The child had been investigated by numerous laboratory investigations and imaging procedures during the initial 9 months, but no organic cause was found. Without any conclusive diagnosis, the child was being managed by physical therapy. During examination in our clinic, the variable contraction of the quadriceps muscle raised the possibility of a psychiatric disorder. A psychiatrist's opinion was sought and the child was found to have dissociative motor disorder. His conflict was identified and treated by cognitive behavioral therapy. The child walked normally after 1 week. A psychogenic limp is often not suspected by the orthopedic surgeon in the evaluation of a limp. The involvement of a psychiatrist in this evaluation may be helpful to identify the condition easily and even at the first instance.

Paediatric Orthopaedic Diagnosis

“…Children with psychological problems may present with a "painful limp" (Tripathy et al 2014 ). The gait pattern may be bizarre and sometimes inconsistent with the pattern varying between examinations.…”

Cosmic acceleration and anisotropic models with magnetic field

“…This is true for whatever matter field taken for the energy momentum tensor excluding electromagnetic contribution. However, the presence of scalar field in generalised Brans-Dicke theory modifies the situation and one can get accelerating model even if the directional Hubble rates are proportional to each other [70]. In the present case i.e, in BSCC, either in the presence or absence of electromagnetic field we will get a non zero value for the functional χ(H) which shows that there is a possibility of getting an accelerating universe for the ansatz (19) in BSCC.…”