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MODULE 11:
The Autonomic Nervous System
PART 7 OF 7
Stina had a urologist for her bladder, a neurologist for her face, and an audiologist for her ears — three specialists, three charts, none of whom saw the others.
Slide 1 Transcript
PATIENT CHART
STINA
THIS PART
Age 45
PRESENTING WITH
Disabling facial pain, hearing loss, wire-but exhausted feeling
DIAGNOSIS
Dysautonomia
DRUGS PERSCRIBED
Anti-seizure Drugs
CHART CLUES
COLLECTED AS YOU GO
Multi-Organ Autonomic Dysfunction
‘Revved’ Flares
Autonomic Symptoms Track Inflammation
Trigeminal Neuralgia
Cochlear Hair-Cell Injury
Two Cranial Nerves Affected
Dysautonomia
Put your money down: Three unrelated problems, or one systemic disease?
Stina had a urologist, a neurologist, and an audiologist — three specialists who never compared notes on her bladderA muscular organ that stores urine before excretion., her face, and her ears.
Pick the answer you believe now. We’ll come back to it later!
Three Specialists, Three Separate Patients
Stina had a urologist for her bladder, a neurologist for her face, and an audiologist for her ears. Each kept a careful chart; none of them read each other’s. To three specialists she was three separate patients with three unrelated problems — a coincidence of misfortune. But laid on a single line, with the crash that opened her nervous-system story at one end, the “coincidence” dissolves into a pattern almost too clean to miss.
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Slide 2 Transcript
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Slide 3 Transcript
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Three Expressions of One Systemic Disease
Read together, these are not three unrelated problems. They are autonomic instability (the rebel bladder, racing pulse, and roiling gut), a demyelinating cranial neuralgia (the electric face pain of CN V), and inflammatory sensorineural hearing loss (the fading high notes of the cochlea and CN VIII) — three expressions of one systemic disease, FMF, reaching nearly the whole nervous systemThe organ system that controls body functions using electrical and chemical signals.. The autonomic nerves, a sensory cranial nerve, and a sensory organ are all vulnerable to the same chronic inflammation, and in Stina all three gave way.
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Slide 4 Transcript
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Slide 5 Transcript
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One Fire Across the Whole Nervous System
That is Chart Clue #11: not bad luck distributed across specialties, but one fire touching the involuntary controlsVariables that remain constant to ensure a fair test., the cranial nervesNerves that arise from the brain and control head and neck functions., and the senses alike. It closes the arc that began with the crash — the nervous system, central and peripheral, autonomic and sensory, was never spared; it was simply read one specialist at a time.
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Slide 7 Transcript
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Slide 8 Transcript
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FINDING!
One Systemic Disease Across Three Specialists
Read together — a neurogenic bladder (with racing pulse and gut trouble), trigeminal neuralgia, and early sensorineural hearing loss — the findings map to one mechanism (dysautonomia, demyelination, hair-cell injury) of a single inflammatory nervous-system disease.
Confirm or refute your bet: Three unrelated problems, or one systemic disease?
ou committed to a verdict: three problems, or one disease? Now map the whole nervous-system chart together.
Slide 7 Transcript
NEXT PART
If FMF can disturb the chemistry of the autonomic synapses and inflame named nerves, what is it doing to the glands that run on chemical signals of their own? The Endocrine module follows the fire into the endocrine systemThe organ system consisting of glands that secrete hormones to regulate body functions., where hormones — not neurotransmittersChemicals released by neurons to transmit signals across a synapse. — carry the body’s longer, slower messages, and where Stina’s inflammation has been quietly leaving its mark.
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← Familial Mediterranean Fever — case home
All pages for Module 11 — The Autonomic Nervous System
11.0 Module Overview
11.1 The Bladder That Won’t Listen
11.2 Two Pedals
11.3 Chemical Messengers
11.4 A Stab in the Face
11.5 The Fading Sound
11.6 Windows and Receivers
11.7 Autonomic Instability
11.8 Conclusion and Assessment
11.9 Evidence Behind the Case
All Modules
- Anatomical Language, Membranes & Homeostasis
- Just Enough Chemistry
- The Cell & Its Transport
- Making Cells & Proteins
- The Integumentary System
- The Skeletal System
- The Muscular System
- Nervous Tissue & the Senses
- The Spinal Cord
- The Brain & the Blood–Brain Barrier
- The Autonomic Nervous System
- Special Senses (in developmentThe process of growth and differentiation.)
- The Endocrine System
- Blood
- The Heart
- Blood Vessels
- The Digestive System
- The Respiratory System
- The Urinary System
- Fluids, Electrolytes & Acid–Base Balance
- The Reproductive System
- The Immune System
List of terms
- bladder
- nervous system
- controls
- cranial nerves
- endocrine system
- neurotransmitters
- development