Tremors and its determinants: A 7-years study at a secondary care hospital

Objective: to evaluate the cause, frequency and determinants of tremors at secondary care settings. methods: a hospital based cross-sectional study for seven years (2002-2009) was carried out at sindh govt. hospital (sgh) liaqatabad no.10, karachi. sample size was 403 and sampling technique was convenience sampling. a data collection form was designed and all essential variables were recorded regarding age, gender, residence, complaints and their duration, education status, profession, co-morbid and investigations performed. the results were analyzedusing spss 16.0. results: out of 403 patients 247 (61.5%) were males and 156 (38.5 %) were females. the mean age of the patients was 55.9 ± 14.2 years. the male to female ratio was 2: 1.6. enhanced physiological tremor was the most frequent diagnosis. among whom, females of 40-60 years were mostly affected. essential tremors were mainly coarse in amplitude, whereas commonest fine tremors were diagnosed as enhanced physiological tremor. conclusion: evaluation of patients with tremors showed males to be more affected with essential tremors being the commonest encountered. orthostatic tremor was rare. essential tremors were diagnosed by exclusion.