Moebius syndrome is a very rare congenital or congenital disease. This nerve disorder causes weakness or paralysis or an inability to respond that occurs in some facial nerves.
As a result of this weak condition, sufferers cannot express facial expressions such as smiling, frowning, pursed lips, raising eyebrows or closing the eyelids. Patients are also generally unable to move the eyes laterally or outward. Therefore, sufferers are often said to have a face like a statue.
Causes of Moebius Syndrome
The exact cause of Moebius syndrome is still unknown. It seems that this disease occurs randomly or randomly. In some cases there appears to be an association between family history and the occurrence of this syndrome. So, it is possible that this syndrome is also caused by genetic disorders.
It is also known that the genetic disorder is inherited in a dominant manner. This means that if one parent suffers from the syndrome, the probability of the child suffering from the same syndrome is about 50 percent.
Another hypothesis states that the cause of Moebius syndrome is ischemia (lack or impaired blood flow) to the fetus or fetus in the womb. Ischemia can be caused by environmental factors. So most likely the cause of Moebius syndrome is a combination of genetic and environmental factors.
Moebius Syndrome Diagnosis
The symptoms and severity of Moebius syndrome are quite variable. The diagnostic criteria for Moebius syndrome include:
- weakness or paralysis of one or both sides of the face
- weakness or paralysis of lateral eye movements
- eye movement persists only in the vertical direction
Symptoms of Moebius Syndrome
The symptoms that arise from Moebius syndrome depend on the facial nerve that is affected. In facial nerve disorders, the patient cannot express facial expressions such as smiling, frowning, pursed lips, raising eyebrows or closing the eyelids. In facial nerve disorders, the patient is unable to move the eyes laterally or outwardly.
Other symptoms can be in the form of abnormalities in the extremities or limbs which is also known as Poland's syndrome. Other symptoms that may also appear include:
- difficulty eating, swallowing, and prone to choking
- turns head back to swallow
- sensitive eyes because you can't squint or even corneal ulcers because your eyes stay open while sleeping
- there is a delay in motor development such as crawling due to upper body weakness
- no blinking eye movement
- strabismus or squint
- drooling
- small chin (micrognathia), small mouth (microstomia)
- high palate
- short or deformed tongue, limited tongue movement, cleft palate
- problems with teeth
- small earlobe (microtia) or none at all (anotia), have hearing loss
- scoliosis
- there are chest and breast muscle abnormalities on one side of the body
