Muscle & nerve
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Case Reports Comparative Study
Saphenous nerve evoked potentials and the assessment of intraabdominal lesions of the femoral nerve.
A technique for recording somatosensory evoked potentials after stimulation of the patellar branch of the saphenous nerve is described and the results from 11 normal subjects and from two patients with intraabdominal femoral nerve injuries are presented. One patients developed a nerve lesion after an abdominal surgical procedure and the second suffered a gunshot wound causing femoral nerve paralysis. Both patients recovered spontaneously. Evoked potentials from saphenous nerves showed a significant discrepancy between faster motor recovery and delay in reinstating sensory axonal conduction.
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Comparative Study
A quantitative assessment of reinnervation in the polyneuropathies.
The severity of denervation and the extent of compensatory reinnervation in a number of neuromyopathies was investigated using our computer-assisted motor unit counting and subtraction techniques. Patients with the chronic neuropathies of diabetes mellitus, renal failure and alcoholism, the acute neuropathy of the Guillain-Barré syndrome, and the neuronopathies of motor neuron disease and Alzheimer's disease were studied. ⋯ In the acute neuropathy of the Guillain-Barré syndrome, reinnervation continued over periods of up to 7 years from the onset of the illness. Within this group some patients showed poor reinnervation, whereas in others we found that all of the electrophysiological parameters studied returned to normal, with concomitant remodeling of previously large motor units to normal size as reinnervation progressed.