Rett Syndrome: a difficult differential diagnosis in prelingual non-verbal children

ABSTRACT

Rett's disease, is a condition rarely met with in clinical phoniatric practice. The present work deals with 2 girls [3 and 3.8 years] met with during a period of 17 years. The routine scheme applied on brain damaged motorly handicapped children was applied on both girls. Both cases showed severe and nearly equal affection of all abilities motoric, manual reflexive, mental, social and language abilities. Although, no special therapeutic program was reported in the literature yet language and physical therapy were presented as a trial. The results of applying both lines of therapy are unsatisfactory regarding the period of follow up. Rett's disease should be suspected by the treating team when the response to language and physical therapy is rather slow, a point of prognostic significance more work is still needed to collect and study these cases in order to understand the pathophysiology of this rare condition