Complex Neuropsychiatric and Laboratory-Instrumental Diagnostics in Determination of Tactics of Therapeutic Management of Patients with Spinal Muscular Atrophy: Regional Experience

INTRODUCTION: Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a rare hereditary disabling disease and the most common hereditary cause of infant deaths. The timely comprehensive diagnosis of SMA permits to plan therapeutic tactics and preserve the quality of patients' life. One of the objectives of the given work is a review of the actual literature data on etiopathogenesis, clinical presentation, valid diagnosis and modern effective tactics of SMA management. AIM: To evaluate the management tactics of patients with SMA taking into account neuropsychiatric symptoms, to analyze problems of proposal and organization of measures aimed at improvement of the quality of medical care, on the basis of the practical experience of the Samara region and with consideration of the current state of the problem. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In the work, the data of the archive of Seredavin Samara Regional Clinical Hospital were analyzed, 132 medical histories of 77 patients were processed with discharge dates from January 2008 to February 2022 with the following diagnoses (according to the code of the International Classification of Diseases and Health Related Problem, 10th revision (ICD-10)): G12.0 (spinal muscular atrophy, type I [Werdnig–Hoffmann disease], G12.1 (other hereditary SMA), G12.8 (other SMA and related syndromes) and G12.9 (unspecified SMA). The analysis of the results of clinical, laboratory, instrumental and neuropsychiatric diagnostic methods was performed in comparison with the tactics of therapeutic management of these patients. For statistical processing of the data, methods of descriptive statistics were used. RESULTS: Socio-demographic data. As of February 2022, 58 patients were registered (mean age 38.4 (41.3) years, of them 32 (55.2%) were individuals of female gender including 21 children (mean age 12.3 (7.4) years, 14 (24.1%) girls), with the following diagnoses according to ICD-10: G12.0 (n = 7; 12.0%; only children), G12.1 (children: n = 14; 24.1%; adults: n = 29; 50.0%), G12.8 (n = 6; 10.3%; only adults), G12.9 (n = 2; 3.4%; only adults). Clinical data. Motor disorders from a mild proximal lower paraparesis (n = 13; 22.4%) to pronounced tetraparesis (n = 7; 12.0%). The study of mental status was limited to evaluation of the state of consciousness and effectiveness of contact. Data on therapy. Until 2021, symptomatic therapy of SMA was conducted in the region, since March 2021, 8 children (13.8% of the total sample) aged 7.3 (8.8) years received nusinersen, another 8 children (13.8%) aged 9.5 (6.9) years received risdiplam; parents of 3 more children (5.2%) refused taking drugs. Of adult patients (n = 37; 63.8%; 35.3 (23.6) years) with confirmed SMA 5q (n = 10; 17.2%, 35.3 (19.0) years), 1 patient received nusinersen, the rest 9 patients (15.5%) did not receive therapy, 3 (5.2%) were achieving the right to receive drugs (at the moment of the analysis). CONCLUSION: The data analysis revealed deficit of early SMA diagnosis (at the moment of the diagnosis, all the patients were already having pronounced symptoms), of assessment of affective and cognitive disorders, monitoring of treatment effectiveness (absence of validated scales for motor skills assessment), and also showed low availability of treatment for adult patients, which requires reorganization of care of patients with SMA in the region taking into account the revealed factors).