An intriguing case of abdominal pain—Belly dancer's syndrome
Key Clinical Message
Belly dancer dyskinesia, a rare disease, may often be overlooked as a regular nonspecific abdominal pain, and therefore, high index of clinical suspicion is required to avert misdiagnosis.
1 CASE VIDEO DESCRIPTION
Belly dancer syndrome is characterized by repetitive irregular jerky movements and is usually preceded by neuropathic symptoms.1
Herein, a 39-year-old man presented with 1 year history of repetitive anterior abdominal and bilateral lower chest wall involuntary jerky movements. In the sitting position, abnormal contractions of the lower chest wall and upper abdominal muscles were seen during examination (Video 1 and Figure 1).
Belly dancer's myoclonus is the epochal travail of contractions of the rectus abdominis, paraspinal, and obliques resulting in chronic abdominal pain and shortness of breath.2 Diagnosis is primarily clinical.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Dhriti Sundar Das: Conceptualization; data curation; investigation; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I acknowledge all the staff of the Department of General Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India for the support received during the consultation of the patient.
FUNDING INFORMATION
The study is nonfunded.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
There is no conflict of interest reported by the author.
ETHICS STATEMENT
Formal ethical approval is not required for case report as per institutional policy.
CONSENT
Written informed consent was obtained from the patient to publish this report in accordance with the journal's patient consent policy.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Not applicable.
