Neurology and Neuromuscular Diseases

Pediatric neurology is a subspecialty of both pediatrics and neurology that deals with diseases of the nervous system and neuromuscular system in infants, children and adolescents.

This discipline incorporates disorders with a wide variety of causes, including genetic and degenerative diseases, traumatic and hypoxic/ischemic injuries of the brain and spinal cord, seizures and epilepsy, syncopal episodes, developmental delay, cognitive dysfunctions, central nervous system infections, brain tumors, muscular dystrophies and other myopathies and neuropathies.

Pediatric neurologists diagnose and treat patients medically, but don't do surgery. Commonly used laboratory procedures to assist diagnosis include:

• Electroencephalogram (EEG) and other neurophysiological studies
• Imaging studies
• Muscle and nerve biopsy
• Genetic tests and other markers in blood samples
• Cerebral-spinal fluid (CSF) examination