Patterns of Muscular Lesions in Several Myopathies

Abstract

It is obvious that within the framework of this monograph only a limited number of cases can be presented. The selection of scans in this chapter was made on the following basis. First of all, we were limited to the cases of neuromuscular diseases which were admitted to our hospital during the period after the introduction of CT scanning as a routine procedure in the investigation of myopathies. This included a large group of patients with myotonic dystrophy which, because of its dominant inheritance, represents statistically a larger group in any hospital where myopathies are investigated. Secondly, during the same period a number of specific investigative projects were going on, leading to re-admission and more intensive follow-up in the out-patient department of diagnoses which are otherwise not so frequently seen, such as X-linked pseudohypertrophic muscular dystrophy of the Becker type. These two factors led to relatively more extensive sections on these two diseases. Particularly for myotonic dystrophy, this also gave us the opportunity to demonstrate how, when enough scans are available of patients of different ages with the same disease, the natural course of the disease can probably be reconstructed quite accurately. A third and perhaps most decisive factor in selecting our cases was of course the importance of the morphological changes.