Tabes Dorsalis - Romberg's Sign

7/13/2005

Question:  What is Romberg's sign?

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15224672.ui or 12539062.ui or 11071500.ui or 1751873.ui or 778342.ui or 5676916.ui

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15224672[PMID] or 12539062[PMID] or 11071500[PMID] or 1751873[PMID] or 778342[PMID] or 5676916[PMID]

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<1>

Unique Identifier [PMID]: 15224672

Authors: Vora SK. Lyons RW.

Institution: Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, New York Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York, NY 10021, USA. setukvora@yahoo.com

Title: The medical Kipling--syphilis, tabes dorsalis, and Romberg's test.

Source: Emerging Infectious Diseases. 10(6):1160-2, 2004 Jun.

Publication Type: Biography. Historical Article. Journal Article.

<2>

Unique Identifier [PMID]: 12539062

Authors: Lanska DJ.

Institution: VA Medical Center, Tomah, Wisconsin 54660, USA.

Title: The Romberg sign and early instruments for measuring postural sway.

Source: Seminars in Neurology. 22(4):409-18, 2002 Dec.

Abstract: In the first half of the 19th century, European physicians-including Marshall Hall, Moritz Romberg, and Bernardus Brach-described loss of postural control in darkness of patients with severely compromised proprioception. Romberg and Brach emphasized the relationship between this sign and tabes dorsalis. Later, other neurologists evaluated the phenomenon, which is now known as Romberg's sign, in a broader range of neurologic disorders using a variety of simple but increasingly precise and sensitive clinical tests. In the late 19th century, neurologists also developed instruments to measure and record postural sway in patients with neurologic disease. Principal contributors included Philadelphia neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell and his trainees Morris Lewis and Guy Hinsdale. The efforts of these neurologists anticipated later physiologic studies and ultimately the development of computerized dynamic platform posturography.

Publication Type: Historical Article. Journal Article.

<3>

Unique Identifier [PMID]: 11071500

Authors: Lanska DJ. Goetz CG.

Institution: Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Great Lakes VA Health Care System, Tomah, WI 54660, USA. Douglas.Lanska@med.va.gov

Title: Romberg's sign: development, adoption, and adaptation in the 19th century.

Source: Neurology. 55(8):1201-6, 2000 Oct 24.

Abstract: In the first half of the 19th century, European physicians-including Marshall Hall, Moritz Romberg, and Bernardus Brach-described loss of postural control in darkness of patients with severely compromised proprioception. Romberg and Brach emphasized the relationship between this sign and tabes dorsalis. Later, other neurologists evaluated the phenomenon in a broader range of neurologic disorders using a variety of simple but increasingly precise and sensitive clinical tests. Although now known as Romberg's sign, among neurologists in the late 19th century this phenomenon was sometimes credited to Romberg, sometimes to both Brach and Romberg, and sometimes discussed without attribution.

Publication Type: Historical Article. Journal Article.

<4>

Unique Identifier [PMID]: 1751873

Authors: Fichtner CG. Weddington WW.

Institution: Loyola University Medical Center, Hines, Illinois.

Title: Suspicion of somatoform disorder in undiagnosed tabes dorsalis.[see comment].

Comments Comment in: Br J Psychiatry. 1992 Feb;160:280; PMID: 1540774

Source: British Journal of Psychiatry. 159:573-5, 1991 Oct.

Abstract: We present a case of tabes dorsalis, which consisted of intermittent, sharp pains and diffuse neurological abnormalities, and was initially considered to be a somatoform disorder. The unusual behavioural presentations of neurosyphilis may lead to premature psychiatric diagnoses. It is thus important that psychiatric consultants be aware of the myriad manifestations of the disease.

Publication Type: Case Reports. Journal Article.

<5>

Unique Identifier [PMID]: 778342

Authors: Schiller F.

Title: Venery, the spinal cord, and tabes dorsalis before Romberg: the contribution of Ernst Horn.

Source: Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease. 163(1):1-9, 1976 Jul.

Abstract: Usually Heinrich Romberg is credited with having established tabes dorsalis as a clinicopathological entity in the 1840s. But Romberg's teacher, Ernst Horn (1774 to 1848), had inspired five different students to write their doctoral dissertations on the same subject. These five theses, published between 1817 and 1827, as well as M. Steinthal's most comprehensive later description, were triggered by Horn's observation of the lower spinal cord atrophy which he found in one of his tabetic patients at autopsy. The dissertations are analyzed together with the prior literature reflected in them as it deals with the spinal cord. Discussions of the putative influence of the spinal cord on the vagaries of male sexual function, and vice versa, began with "consumption of the backbone", referred to in the Hippocratic corpus. "Venery"--if not veneral disease as we understand it--was thought throughout the centuries to be the prime cause of tabes. One may presume that the rising concern with public health and with national aims--a kind of "moral rearmament"--caused the subject to be so vigorously pursued by members of the young medical generation in early 19th-century Germany.

Publication Type: Biography. Historical Article. Journal Article.

<6>

Unique Identifier [PMID]: 5676916

Authors: Wilkins RH. Brody IA.

Title: Romberg's sign.

Source: Archives of Neurology. 19(1):123-6, 1968 Jul.

Publication Type: Journal Article.