The difference between tetanus and tetany

Type of article: Letter to the Editor

Selvakumar Balakrishnan, Final year undergraduate medical student, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Pondicherry 605006, India. E-mail: selvasriram87 [at] gmail [dot] com

Received 17 January 2008; accepted 17 January 2008.

The message from this article [1] is clear enough for anyone to understand; i.e., the terms “tetanus” and “tetany” are not as different as we assume them to be. This deeper understanding is a refreshing experience and inspires us to stop and assimilate medical literature rather than reading it as such, a common practice these days. But it is also true that both the terms are not the same. In my opinion, “tetany” is a state of hyperexcitability in which a muscle can contract non-stop, and this is the final pathogenetic mechanism by which Clostridium tetani causes the disease “tetanus”. Maybe that is why the disease was named tetanus in the first place!

Acknowledgment: I am a student advisor for Medical Physiology Online.

Reference:

[1] Prakash ES. What is the difference between tetanus and tetany? Medical Physiology Online article 3; volume 1: 2008; available from http://www.medicalphysiologyonline.org, [link to the article] accessed 16 Jan 2008

Editor’s note: I commissioned and reviewed this contribution from Selvakumar. We have learnt a lot together and have recently published an article together.

Please cite this letter as:
Balakrishnan S. The difference between tetanus and tetany. Medical Physiology Online [serial online] article 3.2; volume 1: 2008, available from http://medicalphysiologyonline.blogspot.com [Link]

Submit a response to Balakrishnan's letter