Refining the Portrait of Late Effects of Polio

I treat fewer patients with post-polio syndrome (PPS) than I used to. I suspect this is true for most clinicians who have a decade or two of clinical experience. As practitioners see progressively fewer cases of PPS, we are less able to evaluate a given case within a broader perspective of how this patient population generally presents and the extent of the disease’s effects on things like muscle strength, gait performance, balance and fall history, and activity levels. Clinicians, particularly newer clinicians, may never see enough cases to independently develop an accurate, comprehensive portrait of what the late effects of polio look like.