Tardive means delayed and dyskinesia means abnormal movement. Tardive dyskinesia is a disorder which has involuntary movements. Tardive is caused due when you take neuroleptic medications for a long period of time.The symptoms are generally seen in females. Tardive Dyskinesia symptoms are seen in 20% of the patients who are treated for certain psychoses with dopamine antagonist’s medications. Basically the symptoms of this disorder are due to the side effect of medications for specific dopamine receptor used in emotion and lower cognitive function. Medications like Reglan, Deglan and Maxolon are the most common medications known to cause this disease.
The signs and symptoms of this include repetitive and purposeless involuntary movements of body parts like tongue, toe, fingers, limbs, torso and hips. In this disease, you will notice unusual jaw movements, chewing like movements, facial grimacing which is a type of facial expression indicating pain or discomfort, tongue movements and tongue protrusion or swollen tongue. Other symptoms of this disorder include abnormal lip movements, lip smacking, lip puckering and lip pursing. Lip smacking refers to repeated lip movement with a loud smacking noise of lips. In Tardive Dyskinesia, you will also notice unusual signs in eye like rapid eye blinking, rapid movement of arms, legs and trunk, involuntary finger, involuntary and abnormal facial movement. Other symptoms of this disease are Grimacing, sticking out tongue, sucking of lips, smacking of lips, involuntary rapid arm movement and involuntary rapid leg movement.
Tardive dyskinesia is characterized by sudden, uncontrollable and involuntary movement of voluntary muscle groups. Basically the signs include coordinated and constant but involuntary movement of mouth, tongue, jaw and cheeks. In this case, the patient affected by this disorder moves his jaw laterally up and down rapidly as if chewing. Also the patients may have suddenly protruded tongue which may also squirm or keep twisting. There may also ne puffing of cheeks and lip smacking.
There is a different degree of severity of this medical condition which varies from one person to the other. Severity is judged by the frequency of these movement or spasms. In typically severe case, the tongue may even move for about 60 times in just 60 seconds. In few cases, there may be movement of limbs and digits. You would be surprised to know that these symptoms or involuntary movements go to extreme when the patient attempts to relax. Even emotions or agitation may cause these involuntary movements to increase or decrease. When the patient falls asleep, there is no symptom of Tardive dyskinesia. Also Tardive dyskinesia can also occur in post menopausal women due to low levels of estrogens.
There is no treatment of Tardive dyskinesia. All you can do is prevention. If you come across any symptom of Tardive dyskinesia, you should immediately stop taking the medications that cause tardive symptoms. Since the symptoms are aggravated by alcohol and tobacco, therefore risk factor can be avoided by avoiding them.
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