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Feeding difficulties refer to any issues or problems with being able to suck, chew or swallow feed. As a broader term they may refer to any problem with eating, and wanting to eat, including pickiness around food and/or issues feeding oneself.
Feeding difficulties in infancy refer to issues or problems that arise when trying to get an infant to feed or eat. In younger infants this often means problems getting an infant to suck in order to drink milk. This suck may then, in turn, be weak or ineffective. In some infants this can include a difficulty in staying awake when feeding, or losing interest in sucking before they are properly fed. In older infants, feeding difficulties may include difficulties with chewing, as well as a lack of interest in food and in eating in general. Sometimes this will also include a pickiness with food, or a reluctance to try new foods. Feeding difficulties may also trigger a failure to thrive and inadequate growth.
When the bones, or parts of the bones of the fingers, fuse together abnormally. Symptoms may affect multiple parts of the body. Understanding which part of the body a symptom affects, can help us to better understand the potential underlying causes of a symptom, including a rare disease or genetic syndrome. Limbs refer to the arms and legs of the body. They also include the hands and feet connected to the main limbs. Parts of the limbs include the fingers and toes, known as digits. The limbs are an essential part of many different functions of the body, including movement, feeding and other necessary daily skills. Symptoms and features affecting the development and functioning of the limbs may also impact on these activities as well. Generally, symptoms affecting the limbs may be seen with the naked eye. Although diagnosing a limb related symptom may involve different tests and assessments, both subjective and objective.
Finger syndactyly is a webbing or fusion of fingers, connecting two fingers to each other in an abnormal way. Any two fingers or more may be partially or completely involved. When the connection includes bone fusion, it is referred to in some cases as bony or complex syndactyly, or as symphalangism in others. Syndactyly can be corrected surgically. Fused or conjoined fingers may be congenital, or some cases may result from environmental exposure of the fetus during gestation, or both, or the causes may remain unknown. Finger syndactyly can also manifest as part of underlying genetic diseases or syndromes. However, this diagnosis also depends on other accompanying features. Most cases of failure to thrive have a combination of organic and nonorganic causes. Organic FTT may be detected at any age, depending on the disorder that is causing it. Nonorganic FTT will usually be noticeable before the child is one year old, and often by 6 months. Medical problems that can cause failure to thrive can be minor and relatively easy to correct. For example, a cleft lip or cleft palate could cause trouble chewing or swallowing. Some other disorders may also stop the child from absorbing, retaining, or processing the food that they do eat. Infections, tumors, diseases, syndromes or metabolic disorders could also cause FTT. It is rare for FTT to result from inadequate breast milk production or low fat content.
Abnormalities of the nail can often be a result of skin disease or infection. Medical professional examination of finger and toe nails offers a great deal of information, both general and specific, about the patient’s health, including the possibility of malignancy, and specifics of nutritional health. Fingernail dysplasia, that is to say, certain types of abnormal fingernail development and some specific appearance of the nails, can be a marker for certain diseases or syndromes. This diagnosis also depends on other accompanying features such as a change in appearance related to growth, including but not limited to ridging, flaking or poor growth.
An abnormally low degree of mobility or flexibility of the muscles beneath the skin of the face, leading to an unchanging facial expression that is “fixed in place”. Fixed facial expression can be a marker for certain diseases or syndromes. This diagnosis also depends on other accompanying features.
A nostril that appears large, even when at rest. Flared nostrils may occur when a person breathes in and out. But the definition of flared nostrils is when the nostrils are still large even when air is not being forced in and out of them.
Flat forehead, that is an unusually flat forehead, can appear on one or both sides of the forehead. It may also coincide with distortions to the sides and back of the head if certain bones of the skull are involved. Flattened or distorted areas of a baby’s head can be a result of, or confused with, positional flattening, which occurs when babies lie in certain positions for extended periods over time. Flat forehead can be a marker for certain diseases or syndromes. This diagnosis also depends on other accompanying features.
Focal behavior arrest seizure can include focal aware behavior arrest seizure (with awareness continuing throughout) and focal impaired awareness behavior arrest seizure. “Focal” is an important emphasis in the term to differentiate between these and absence seizures, or generalized non-motor seizures. Brief behavior arrest is very common, and thus, in order to identify a seizure as focal behavior arrest seizure, the arrest must persist throughout the entirety of the seizure. Behavior arrest means movement stops. The person experiencing the focal behavior arrest seizure may simply stare and not otherwise move at all. Common non-motor symptoms of focal behavior arrest seizure could include changes in sensation, emotions, thinking or cognition, or in autonomic functions: the person could feel things such as gastrointestinal sensations, waves of heat or cold, goosebumps, or heart racing. Motor symptoms could include unusual chewing movements, mumbling, wandering or running away, falling down, jerking or shaking, loss of bladder control, or automatisms: repetitive, non-purposeful movements that appear random, such as plucking, blinking, lip smacking, grunting, gulping or shouting. If at the start of the seizure, fear resulting in an inability to move (“freezing”) is clearly identified by the patient as the seizure’s primary onset feature, the seizure can be classified as a focal emotional seizure with fear, with the descriptive feature being immobility due to fear.