thesis
Evaluation of scales and measurement instruments in immune-mediated polyneuropathies
- Publication date
- 31 January 2001
- Publisher
- Immune-mediated neuropathies mainly include Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) (most
common form: acute inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (AJDP)), chronic
inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), neuropathy associated with
monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUSP), and multifocal motor
neuropathy (MMN) (1-11). Electrophysiological examination in these patients generally
reveals features of a demyelinating polyneuropathy. These neuropathies have become
increasingly important in clinical neurology because they are readily diagnosable and
potentially treatable. Evidence has emerged from many papers in the last decade to indicate
that these illnesses represent part of a continuum separated by their neuromuscular
dysfunction pattern, time course and response to various treatments (Figure I; 1-11).
However, the distinction between these illnesses is in some aspect somewhat artificial. In the
following, selected aspects of these diseases are discussed with particular emphasis on
clinical presentation and outcome measures applied in clinical studies published from
January 1988 to January 1999 that included patients with one of these disorders.