Evaluación funcional de sistemas sensoriales mediante potenciales evocados en niños con trastornos del espectro autista

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the possible sensorial affectation of the somesthetic system in children with speech disorders, mainly with the autistic spectrum disorders (ASD)through the use of the recording technique for somatosensory evoked potential (SEP).Subjects and methods: We performed a longitudinal retrospective study on 40 children remitted to CIREN'S Laboratory of Evoked Potentials from August 2000 to May 2009. The children presented disorders in language acquisition, most of them within the ASD. The sample was composed of 24 males and 16 females (aged between 2 and 13 years of age). To obtain SEP, recording electrodes were applied on the L4-T12 lumbar region (plexus derivation) and in Cz-Fz cortical region, by stimulating the posterior tibial nerve. Additionally, the auditory brainstem response (ABR) was performed to discard functional disorders of the auditory pathway.Results: 92% of the children studied showed alterations in SEP, of which 65% was related to an increment of central conduction time (CCT); 10% had no bilateral cortical response and 12.5% presented morphologic distortion of the evoked cortical response.ABR was conducted on 29 of the 40 studied children, and it was observed that 75.8% were normal and only 24.1% presented anomalies. Of these, 5 were related to affectation of wave I, another presented bilateral hypoacusia and the remaining one had no evoked response, where the bilateral form of dysfunction predominated.Conclusions: Our results suggest a possible relation between the dysfunction of the somesthetic system and language retard. The affectation of this system was greater than the auditory ones in the patients studied.