Malignant hypertonic hyperpyrexia

Malignant hypertonic hyperpyrexia is a syndrome which has been reported with increasing frequency in recent years1-6. It is characterised by generalised muscle rigidity followed by a rapid rise in temperature. In patients receiving suxamethonium, this rigidity usually occurs immediately as an abnormal response, but it may appear later on in the course of an anaesthetic, usually after the administration of a fluorinated hydrocarbon 7. Most of the reported cases have occurred in people of European or African descent with very few in Mongolians. We describe here a case of malignant hypertonic hyperpyrexia occurring in a Chinese boy. This is the first case reported from the Caribbean. The patient's antecedents came from China to Jamaica, so information is only available concerning those blood relations of his own and his parents' generation. Neither his mother nor his father had had a general anaesthetic, and of their ten siblings only two had been anaesthetised, both without apparent ill-effect. None of twenty-three first cousins, nor his sister (his only sibling) had had general anaesthesia.

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