Multichannel surface electrodes increase the sensitivity of diagnosis of neuropathy in diabetic patients.
This prospective study investigated the diagnostic sensitivity of a novel multichannel surface electrode for detecting electrophysiologic changes in symptomatic diabetic neuropathy. We recruited healthy subjects without neuropathic complaints and diabetic patients with distal symmetric sensory symptoms who had normal nerve conduction studies (NCS). Eight compound muscle action potentials (CMAPs) were recorded using a multichannel electrode from each subject's abductor pollicis brevis muscle by stimulating the median nerve at the wrist. Latency- and amplitude-related variables were obtained and analyzed to compare the two groups. We used the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) algorithm to determine the cut-off values for selected predictors of diabetic neuropathy. All of the variables related to CMAP latency showed statistically significant differences between the median values for the diabetic group and the healthy control group. For example, the median value of the maximum latency and standard deviation of the eight CMAP onset latencies in diabetic patients (3.82ms and 0.15ms, respectively) were significantly larger than those in controls (3.26ms and p<0.001; 0.09ms and p<0.001, respectively). The CART analysis revealed that these variables were the most sensitive and specific variables for discriminating between patients with diabetic neuropathy and normal subjects. The multichannel surface electrode demonstrated both high sensitivity and specificity in detecting neurophysiologic abnormality of diabetic neuropathy, even when conventional NCS did not detect the abnormality.
Department of Neurology, Korea University Medical Center, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Yong Seo
YS
Koo
Ki-Young
KY
Jung
Sang-Hoon
SH
Lee
Charles S
CS
Cho
Kyung-Sook
KS
Yang
Jae Hong
JH
Jang
Byung-Jo
BJ
Kim
D003929:Diabetic Neuropathies / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004566:Electrodes; D004576:Electromyography / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009469:Neuromuscular Junction; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D009435:Synaptic Transmission
Compound muscle action potentials; Diabetic neuropathies; Early diagnosis; Multichannel electrode; Nerve conduction study; Neural conduction