Objective: To determine (1) how blepharospasm effects postural stability and (2) to evaluate the efficacy of botulinum toxin therapy (BoNT-A) on static balance in patients with blepharospasm.

Background: Blepharospasm is a focal dystonia manifesting with involuntary, intermittant, sustained contactions of the eyelids. There are no studies on the impact of blepharospasm on postural stability. Furthermore, there are no reports on the the effect of botulinum toxin on static balance in patients with blepharospasm.

Methods: Twenty patients with blepharospasm, receiving regular BoNT-A injections and 20 age- and sex- matched healthy controls were included in the study. All subjects were evaluated on a static posturography force platform performing four tasks (eyes open, eyes closed, tandem Romberg and verbal cognitive task). Evaluations of the patients were repeated 4 weeks after the injection.

Results: Pre-treatment lateral and anterior-posterior sways, sway area and velocities of the sways were significantly higher in patients than controls during cognitive tasks and tandem Romberg (p<0.05). In the patient group, with eyes open, none of the parameters improved after BoNT-A injection. On the other hand, with eyes closed, tandem Romberg and cognitive tasks, most of the sway parameters and velocities improved significantly after treatment (p <0.05).

Conclusions: Blepharospasm may cause functional deficits in patients. This study demonstrated that postural stability worsens in patients with blepharospasm under dual-task conditions. BoNT-A injection therapy markedly improves quality of life of patients with blepharospasm. Our study showed that treatment with BoNT-A injection improved static balance under dual-task conditions in these patients.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/postural-stability-in-blepharospasm-and-the-effects-of-botulinum-toxin-therapy/