A 7-year-old boy was brought to the pediatrician by his parents after a concerning report from his teacher. She had noticed that he would be in the midst of activities and simply stop all action, gaze abnormally into the distance, perhaps blink a few times, and then go back to what he was doing. Sometimes he might smack his lips repeatedly. If she tried to talk to him during those few seconds, his mental status seemed altered, like he couldn’t hear her. But he would quickly return to normal and act like nothing had happened. He was having recurring episodes multiple times a day. The teacher suggested he might need evaluation for ADD or autism spectrum disorder, but his parents didn’t feel he had any other symptoms of either diagnosis. They had only seen the same thing happen a few times at home and brushed it off as daydreaming, but the teacher had raised their level of concern.
Is it childhood absence epilepsy, ADHD, basilar migraine headache, or a case of breath-holding spells?
Subscribe to VisualDx Today
Become a VisualDx subscriber today and gain access to clinical information and medical images of thousands of diagnoses. Your first 7 days are FREE.