EMG questions

[puck16]

Hi,

first of all thank you for running this forum and spending your time on helping people with their concerns. And apologies in advance for what are probably silly questions (of course, I've read the sticky)!

I'm posting because I recently started to have a lot of twitching. It started in June 2021 and was fairly mild/occasional then, but for a couple of months I've been having constant (24/7) twitching in both of my calves, as well as occasional twitches in other areas, which is rather crazy to look at and made me very concerned. There seems to be one muscle in particular that is twitching permanently, but I also do get other twitches distributed all over the calves (sometimes all at the same time).

The difficulty in my case is that I have a genetic neuropathy and resulting (clinical) weakness. I've had this all my life though, and the twitching started only recently and became much worse quickly, which made me scared about having MND in addition to the neuropathy. My neurologist, however, dismisses the twitching because of the neuropathy and didn't even look at it.

I therefore had a few questions relating to twitching and my last EMG (which was done because of the neuropathy) where I hoped you could give me some information. The EMG from September 2021 is attached.

1) If the twitching was caused by MND, would this have shown up on the EMG if the EMG was only done a few months after the twitching started? The reason I'm asking is just that at the time of the EMG, I didn't have the crazy 24/7 twitches that I have now, but it was much milder.

2) Is it obvious from the EMG that the abnormalities there are due to the neuropathy rather than MND? Or could MND lead to similar findings?

3) Is it fair to say that if the twitching continues for some time without any severe muscle failures or a substantial progression of weakness, this would make MND unlikely? If so, how long would that period be?

4) Do you think it would be useful to try and ask the neurologist for another EMG?

I really appreciate your thoughts!

 

[affected]

Thanks for posting the results.
1. Surely you asked your neurologist this? It sounds like they have given you a lot of reassurance. As the sticky says, and as you probably saw we say constantly, despite trying to avoid that having a huge sticky available - if the twitching were caused by MND the EMG would have shown it.

2. yes

3. yes. no time frame, twitching means nothing

4. no, you are not a doctor, don't tell them what to do, listen to them instead.

 

[puck16]

Thank you for your reply, that's very helpful!

Unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to talk about either MND or the twitching with my neurologist at all. With the NHS, I can’t make an appointment with them directly but have to send an email to the hospital and see what they say. My last appointment was only about the neuropathy. When I sent them a message about the twitching recently, I just got a one-liner back and they didn’t look at it or talk about it in more detail — that was the reason why I posted here.

 

[affected]

But the EMG was done in Sept LAST year.
Honestly if you had a terminal disease you would have been contacted by now, and you would be either dead or noticeably incapacitated.
I think inside, you realise that.
Go see your GP and have a good chat about your state of fear.

 

[lgelb]

From what you say, there is no reason to talk about MND further, and twitching is so common as to be meaningless in itself.