Teens Complaining Of Many Vague Symptoms Could Suffer From Rare Syndrome
By Lynne Adkins
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Does a teen in your life exhibit various vague symptoms and complain of feeling lousy? In some rare cases, it could be POTS.
Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, is a disorder of the autonomic nervous system and is found mainly in girls.
Dr. Steven Shapiro, chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Abington Memorial Hospital, says it can take a while to diagnose:
"These children often present to a pediatrician's office with a myriad of symptoms that look like everything else. They'll present with fatigue, with headaches, they'll feel light-headed, they'll tell us they're feeling like their hearts are pounding, they're not able to exercise."
He adds it also takes a lot of doctors to diagnose:
"It takes a little bit of skill to diagnose it doing something called 'the tilt test.' You basically take the patient from laying flat back on their backs to upright very quickly, and then you assess their blood pressure and pulses"
Unfortunately, patients must live with the issues. There is no treatment.