Diagnostic yield of noninvasive high spatial resolution electromyography in neuromuscular diseases

✍ Scribed by Hans-Jürgen Huppertz; Catherine Disselhorst-klug; Jiri Silny; Günter Rau; Gerhard Heimann

• Book ID: 102653950
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 533 KB
• Volume: 20
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0148-639X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4598(199711)20:11<1360::aid-mus3>3.0.co;2-8

✦ Synopsis

High Spatial Resolution electromyography (HSR-EMG), a new kind of noninvasive surface EMG based on a spatial filtering technique, was evaluated with respect to the diagnosis of neuromuscular diseases. HSR-EMG measurements were recorded from 61 healthy subjects and 72 patients with different neuromuscular diseases and analyzed quantitatively.

The results indicate that a few parameters such as muscular conduction velocity, dwell time over root mean square, autocorrelation function, and chi-value are sufficient to recognize and classify specific signal alterations due to neuromuscular disorders. A diagnostic evaluation procedure calculating automatically the most probable diagnosis from the parameter results could assign the correct diagnosis to about 81% of the investigated patients and healthy subjects. Myopathic disorders were recognized with a sensitivity of 85% (specificity: 97%), neuropathic disorders with a sensitivity of 68% (specificity: 98%). We conclude that HSR-EMG shows a diagnostic validity similar to that described in literature for needle EMG. Moreover, the noninvasive technique provides the advantage of a simple and painless application.