Peripheral nerve involvement in rheumatic chorea: an electrophysiological study

The aim of this study was to examine the peripheral nerves to detect any involvement in patients with active rheumatic chorea using electrophysiologic methods. The study included 17 patients with active rheumatic chorea. Their ages ranged between 6 and 15 years. All patients showed elevated values of serological tests for rheumatic activity. Motor nerve conduction for the median and ulnar nerves and electromyography was performed. It was found that, out of the 17 patients 7 had normal function of the nerves, the other 10 showed affection in the form of demyelination of the distal segment in 7 patients, proximal segment in one and both proximal and distal in one. The tenth patient showed evidence of pure axonopathy without demyelination. An immunological basis for this pathophysiologic finding was suggested

Carpal tunnel syndrome: clinical and distal latency [DML] correlation

Previous studies have determined contradictory views on the correlation between the clinical severity of carpal tunnel syndrome and its electrophysiological results. The aim of this work is to study the correlation between the clinical severity of the CTS and the distal motor latency [DML] abnormality at the wrist. Forty four female patients [88 hands] with CTS were the material of this work; the clinical severity was graded from 1 to 7. The DML was measured in milliseconds using a Tonnies electromyography. The results of this study revealed the presence of significant differences among the mean DML of the distinct clinical grades [F equals 10.66]. However, further analysis showed no significant differences among cases with CTS clinically graded from 1 to 5, yet cases clinically graded 6 and 7 had a significant higher mean DML than other clinical grades. The relation between clinical grading and the mean DML was found to be curvilinear