Decorticate posturing is a specific body position that signals brain damage. Someone with decorticate posturing can’t control it. Decorticate posturing needs immediate medical attention.
What Is Decorticate Posturing?
Decorticate posture is one type of abnormal posturing. Abnormal posturing involves holding a certain position without meaning to because of problems in your brain. Decerebrate posturing and opisthotonos are the other types of abnormal posturing. Decerebrate and decorticate posturing can happen in the same patient (as a progress of disease or improvement).
What Does Decorticate Posturing Look Like?
Decorticate posturing has several key details.
- Your arms will be close to your sides and bend in at the elbows.
- Your forearms and hands will rest on your chest.
- Your hands may each twist inward at the wrists with your knuckles facing or touching each other.
- Your fingers may bend inward towards your palms.
- Your legs will be straight.
- Your feet will turn inward to face each other.
Decorticate posturing usually happens when you’ are unconscious.
When Does Decorticate Posturing Happen?
You won’t be fully conscious and alert while you have decorticate posturing. It often happens during:
- Comas
- Strokes
- Concussions
- Drug overdoses
- Poisoning
- Brain tumors
- Injuries to the head and brain
- Infections like encephalitis, meningitis and Reye's syndrome
- Brain swelling
- Increased pressure in the brain
- Seizures
- Liver failure
What Causes Decorticate Posturing?
Your brain has different areas for different functions. These areas manage large and small muscle movement and reflexes in different parts of your body. With decorticate posturing, these areas don’t manage these movements like they should.
Scientists aren’t sure of the exact processes in the brain that lead to decorticate posturing. Brain damage usually affects multiple areas of the brain at once. Damage in one or several of these areas can link to decorticate posturing.
Treatment for Decorticate Posturing
Decorticate posturing always needs immediate medical attention. Treatment for decorticate posturing should target the underlying issue causing it. Brain damage is serious. It can lead to other health problems and death if left untreated.
A hospital’s intensive care unit will typically treat you if you have decorticate posturing. First, they’ll give you a breathing tube as an emergency measure.
To find the underlying issue, a doctor might:
Do a brain scan. Several types of machine tests can see inside your brain to find injuries and other problems. These include:
- Cerebral angiography, which uses X-rays to view how blood flows through the brain.
- MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), which uses special magnets and radio waves to create images of the brain.
- CT (computed tomography) scan, which uses X-rays to view the brain and the inside of the skull.
- EEG (electroencephalogram), which measures the electrical activity between cells in your brain.
- ICP (intracranial pressure), which measures the pressure inside your brain.
Test body fluids. Your blood and urine may help figure out why you have decorticate posturing. Blood and urine tests can measure levels of drugs or toxic chemicals, vitamins and minerals, and other details related to brain problems.
A doctor may also want to test your cerebrospinal fluid through a lumbar puncture, or spinal tap. Cerebrospinal fluid covers the outside of your brain and spinal cord. It protects and nourishes your brain, spine, and nervous system. Cerebrospinal fluid samples can diagnose:
- Infections
- Bleeding inside the brain
- Problems with fighting infections
- Problems with reflexes and senses
- Problems using energy
- Certain types of cancer
For a lumbar puncture, a doctor will place you on your side or stomach so they can access your lower back. The doctor will inject medicine to numb the area, then insert a hollow needle into your lower back to extract cerebrospinal fluid.
Ask about medical history. A doctor will ask you or someone you know:
- When your symptoms began
- The medications you take
- If you take drugs you’re not prescribed
- How your usual posture looks
- If you’ve had a head injury
- Other symptoms you may have
This information will help the doctor figure out why you have decorticate posturing. Then they can treat the issue causing it.
Risks of Decorticate Posturing
Decorticate posturing signals serious brain damage. That damage can lead to death if you don’t get medical help quickly. Decorticate posturing can also lead to decerebrate posturing. Decerebrate posturing happens with more severe health problems.
You may not fully recover from the issues causing decorticate posturing. Brain damage can cause lasting symptoms. After you receive treatment, you might still have paralysis, seizures, headaches, and other problems.
