Combination therapy in hemiballismus-hemichorea syndromes – A report of two cases

Abstract

Hemiballismus-hemichorea is an uncommon disorder. In the past, patients developing hemiballismus and hemichorea were considered to have poor prognosis with high morbidity and even mortality at times. While majority of patients of hemiballismus go into spontaneous remission, some severe cases require prolonged treatment. We here describe two such cases of which one presented to us with post stroke hemiballismus, unresponsive to monotherapy and the other was an HIV positive patient with unresponsive hemichorea secondary to CNS toxoplasmosis. Both these patients responded well when combination therapy was instituted and had normal recovery.