229 Paget’s disease
Salient features
History
• Ask the patient whether there is an increase in hat size
• Joint pain (from osteoarthritis secondary to bone disease)
• Painless bowing of the bone can be the first symptom
• Fractures with minimal trauma
• Nerve entrapment syndromes including paraparesis and radioculopathy when the spine is affected.
Examination
• Comment on the hearing aid, if any; test hearing and determine whether the deafness is a conduction defect (from involvement of the ossicle) or neural (from compression of the eighth nerve)
• In up to one-third of patients the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae are involved, and in 20% the lower thoracic vertebrae are involved.