Eyelid tics (says Parinaud[65]) are known to ophthalmologists as
clonic blepharospasms. Their starting-point is always some
peripheral stimulus, in particular an everyday variety of
conjunctivitis characterised by the presence of granulations in the
lower part of the sac. To discover these granulations it may be
necessary to explore the internal aspect of the lid. In my opinion,
they are a prolific cause of tic, especially in young children, and
their removal effects a cure in the vast majority of cases.
It is only when the blinking abides in spite of the suppression of the
exciting cause that it can be comprised in the category of tics,
otherwise the fact of its being contingent on the continuance of the
irritation shows it is a spasm.
A bright light sometimes suffices to initiate these conditions. During a
course of sittings for her portrait, G., a little girl eleven years of
age, acquired the habit of drooping one eyelid slightly to shield the
eye from the somewhat glaring light of the studio, but the persistence
of this movement in other surroundings was evidence of its degeneration
into a tonic tic.
Noir quotes the case of one of his colleagues who was for a long time
inconvenienced by a most disagreeable blinking, which he held to be a
tic; but a simple explanation was forthcoming in the unusual length of
some of the eyelashes on the outer part of the upper lid having caused
their entanglement with others in the under one, and when they were cut
off the spasm disappeared.
In the following instance, reported by Toby Cohn,[66] the diagnosis
remains undetermined:
The protracted use of a magnifying glass in the left eye was the
means, in a watchmaker, of inducing occasional localised twitches
of the orbicularis, which were not slow, however, in spreading to
the whole of the left half of the face. They may at first have been
an involuntary motor response to nipping of palpebral twigs of the
trigeminal, but at a later period their independence was constant
and pronounced. With certain associated movements such as
articulation or deglutition, or during the act of wiping the nose
or shutting the eyes, the form they assumed was tonic. There were
neither subjective nor objective sensory phenomena to note.
We have recently had the opportunity of observing a genuine case of
eyelid tic, of obscure origin perhaps, but one whose clinical features
eliminate the hypothesis of spasm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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