The most frequent neurological side effects of the muscle relaxants

1. Big picture

Muscle relaxants are drugs used to reduce excessive muscle tone, spasms, spasticity, dystonia, or painful muscle contraction. In neurology, they are used mainly for:

• spasticity after stroke;
• multiple sclerosis-related spasticity;
• spinal cord injury;
• cerebral palsy;
• painful muscle spasms;
• dystonia;
• trigeminal neuralgia as add-on treatment;
• severe rigidity/spasm syndromes.

The key exam sentence:

Muscle relaxants commonly cause neurological side effects such as drowsiness, dizziness, weakness, fatigue, ataxia, confusion, hypotonia, falls, respiratory depression, and withdrawal syndromes.

The most important clinical trap:

A muscle relaxant may impr