Fulminant inflammatory neuropathy mimicking cerebral death.

We report a case of a 44-year-old woman who developed rapidly progressive tetraparesis followed by respiratory failure and abolition of brainstem reflexes. Electrodiagnostic studies excluded the possibility of cerebral death and confirmed the diagnosis of acute motor-sensory axonal neuropathy. The initial fulminant course of the disease was followed by slow recovery to independence in daily activities.

Occurrence of A-waves in F-wave studies of healthy nerves.

A-waves are compound muscle action potentials that follow the M-wave with a constant shape and latency; usually they are detected during F-wave studies. A large reference value database for F-wave parameters from the median, ulnar, peroneal, and tibial nerves was collected from 121-196 subjects aged 14 to 95 years without known pathology involving the studied nerves. From this material, we studied retrospectively the occurrence of A-waves.

Reference values of F wave parameters in healthy subjects.

Objective And Methods: A large reference value database for F wave parameters was constructed with data from 121 to 196 healthy subjects; the age range of the subjects was 14-95 years. We studied the following parameters: minimum F wave latency (FMINLAT), mean F wave latency (FMEANLAT), maximum F wave latency (FMAXLAT), number of F waves/20 stimuli (FNUMBER) and F wave dispersion (FDISP=FMAXLAT-FMINLAT). The median, ulnar, peroneal and tibial nerves were studied.