Clinical Profile of Pediatric Guillain-Barré Syndrome: A study from National Referral Hospital in West Java, Indonesia

Abstract

Diagnosing Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) in children is challenging due to its highly variable clinical presentation. However, the clinical profile still becomes the hallmark of diagnosis. Thus, this study was aimed at exploring the clinical profile of pediatric GBS. This is a retrospective study of clinical profile at a national referral hospital in West Java, Indonesia from January 2011‒December 2015. From a total of 40 patients, 27 complete medical records were included in the study. The gender distribution, females were outnumbered, male. Most patients were in preschool (4-5 years) and school-age (6-12 years) category. All patients had bilateral, progressive, and ascending pattern muscle weakness. Muscle weakness limited in legs was evident in 29.6% of patients. Sensory deficits were presented in 37%, autonomic dysfunction 14.8%, cranial nerve involvement 29.6%, and respiratory failure 11.1%. Most patients were discharged from the hospital with improvement. GBS profile in our pediatric patients has wide-ranging manifestation thus diagnosis criteria covering all patients are very important.