A comparison of electrophysiological tests for the early diagnosis of diabetic neuropathy

✍ Scribed by Carlos Pastore; Virginia Izura; Emilio Geijo-Barrientos; Jose-Ramon Dominguez

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 143 KB
• Volume: 22
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0148-639X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4598(199912)22:12<1667::aid-mus8>3.0.co;2-w

✦ Synopsis

Clinical criteria and several electrophysiological parameters for detecting nerve damage were compared in 99 patients with diabetes mellitus type 1 and type 2. Abnormal results were found in sural/radial amplitude ratio (51%), minimal F-wave latency of the tibial nerve (36.4%), sensory conduction velocity of the sural nerve (29.8%), and sural sensory nerve action potential amplitude (29.3%) when pooling data from all patients and comparing them to age-and height-matched normal control subjects. Analysis of all the parameters revealed large differences between the diabetes mellitus type 1 and type 2 groups, suggesting that the type of diabetes must be taken into account when comparing the sensitivity of nerve conduction tests. In diabetes mellitus type 1, the sural/radial ratio had the clearest correlation with course of illness and was the first parameter to show a significant reduction. We conclude that the simple ratio between sural and radial amplitudes is a very sensitive parameter and abnormalities in this ratio provide the means for earliest detection of neuropathy in diabetes mellitus type 1.