Complications From SMA

Hide Video Transcript

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]
HAN PHAN
For patients with SMA, or a spinal muscular atrophy, some of the symptoms that you will see or, complication that you will see in any age group are as a result of progressive muscle weakness. And that's because they're nerve degenerate over time. When you look at different types, there's different complications.

So for that type one during infancy, one of the complication you see as a result of muscle weakness is their inability to breathe, their inability to talk, their inability to eat, and clear their saliva. So those are very crucial function that you need during infancy to survive.

Now when you're moving on to type two and three and of course four in adulthood, most of the symptoms that you see are more of progressive muscle weakness, again. Things that you see are curvature of your back. Sometimes it can also affect your breathing muscle as well. So then you will also need breathing treatments or breathing machines to help you breathe at night or even in the day.

Other issues that you see are that you lose the ability to walk because of the progressive muscle weakness. And so those are some of the complication that you commonly see with SMA.