trfogey
Very helpful member
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2008
- Messages
- 2,043
- Reason
- PALS
- Diagnosis
- 07/2007
- Country
- US
- State
- NC
- City
- Raleigh
wow i hope everything is ok and the emg is still normal i sure hate when neuros arent helpful, they just are blank.. really i guess bc they just dont know i had a muscle biopsy done last week, she told me sometimes its so early with symtoms starting off the test are just not sensitive to pick anything up yet, i read this on a site called the Awaji criteria something new that fascilitions can be used now to detect als without giveing false positve testing. you should give it a read very interesing.
You've misunderstood what you've read and oversimplified what you did understand of what you read. Fasciculations alone are not evidence of ALS because there are many kinds of fasciculations. There are specific type of fasciculations, combined with other electrophysiological evidence of denervation/renervation and clinical signs of lower motor neuron problems that combine to narrow the diagnostic field toward ALS, not just fasciculations alone.
The original El Escorial criteria for diagnosing ALS required some specific electrophysiological abnormalities -- fibrillations and positive sharp waves -- to be present to sustain the diagnosis of Laboratory Supported Probable ALS. Those abnormalities were not always detectable in some ALS patients, which prevented those patients from being able to participating in many clinical trials despite displaying obvious, unmistakable, and profound disability and progression caused by ALS. The Awaji criteria are designed to provide additional ways to conclude electrophysiologically that there is a neurogenic process at work in a given muscle.
For everyone else, especially the undiagnosed who might have been alarmed by munecagirl22's deceptive (wittingly or not) characterization of the Awaji criteria, here's a paper that explains the technical stuff that our hopelessly confused young lady left out.
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