Altered structure and function of muscle are not accurately revealed by palpation. Of course, the difference between the firm, hypertrophied muscle of a well-conditioned athlete and the slack muscle of a sedentary person is as apparent to the palpating fingers as to the eye, as is also the persistent contraction in tetanus, cramp, contracture, fibrosis, and extrapyramidal rigidity. The muscles in dystrophy are said to have a “doughy” or “elastic” feel, but we find this difficult to judge. In the Pompe type of glycogen storage disease, attention may be attracted to the musculature by an unnatural firmness and increase in bulk. The swollen, edematous, weak muscles in acute rhabdomyolysis with myoglobinuria or severe polymyositis may feel taut and firm but are usually not tender. Areas of tenderness in muscles that otherwise function normally, a state called myogelosis, have been attributed to fibrositis or fibromyositis, but their nature has not been divulged by biopsy.
Topographic Patterns of Myopathic Weakness
In almost all the diseases under consideration, some muscles are affected and others spared, each disease displaying its own pattern. Restated, the topography or distribution of weakness tends to be alike in all patients with the same disease. The pattern of weakness is as important a diagnostic attribute of muscular disease as for the various diseases of the peripheral nervous system discussed in Chap. 43, but the configurations differ in important ways. As a general rule, muscle diseases are identified by a predominantly proximal weakness that is symmetric.
The following patterns of muscle involvement constitute a core of essential clinical knowledge in this field. Subacute and chronic evolution of weakness is distinguished in each category from more acute causes.
Ocular palsies presenting as ptosis, diplopia, and strabismus Primary diseases of muscle do not involve the pupil, and in most instances their effects are bilateral. In lesions of the third, fourth, or sixth cranial nerves, a neural origin is disclosed by the pattern of ocular muscle palsies, abnormalities of the pupil, or both. When weakness of the orbicularis oculi (muscles of eye closure) is added to weakness of eye opening (levator palpebrae; ptosis), it nearly always signifies myasthenia gravis. The rare primary disease of ocular muscle (progressive external ophthalmoplegia) is usually symmetric and does not produce diplopia. Other causes of subacute and chronic development of relatively pure weakness of the muscles of eye movement are oculopharyngeal dystrophy, and exophthalmic (hyperthyroid) ophthalmopathy. In PEO, the muscles, including the levators of the eyelids, become paralyzed almost symmetrically over a period of years. In most cases, this disorder is a form of mitochondrial myopathy. Oculopharyngeal dystrophy involves primarily the levators of the eyelids and, to a lesser extent, other eye muscles and pharyngeal-upper esophageal striated muscles. It begins in middle or late adult life and later, and—like PEO—tends only decades later to involve girdle and proximal limb muscles.