I've had 3 of them with nerve conduction studies at the same time. Mine consisted of one part where they zapped me over various sections of my arms and hands with electrical stimulation at the same time as they were measuring the nerve response. If you've ever had stim treatments at a chiropractor, it's a bit similar but at a higher zap level. Your muscles definitely jump, as can you. For me, that wasn't too horrendous other than the anticipation of getting zapped again.

The 2nd part that I was not fond of was the needle tests where they inserted the needles and sorta ground down to get a good connection for measurement. On me it didn't really hurt much through the arms but when it got to the ball of the thumb/palm and top of the hand near the thumb, that wasn't much fun. Point blank it hurt. You have to stay still though or it can hurt more by jerking the probe and then they'll have to stick you again to get a reading that's not distorted from your jerking (did that on the first test, made sure I didn't repeat that mistake on the rest). Good thing is it's fairly quick and if you experienced similar to what I had, you don't have much other than a localized ache where you got poked. My discomfort faded pretty quickly (10 mins max) and I have fibromyalgia on top of TOS so I tend to have the joys of pain a bit more than others do. There was only one aspect of my last EMG that I refuse to ever do again (unless I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO) and while I'm glad I did it, I'm just not brave enough to do it again unless I'm able to be on Verset where I won't remember it. They had me on Verset when I got my discograms and I don't remember a thing even tho apparently I cussed them out royally (the report said I vehemently protested) when they found the disc that was giving problems.

One of my neurologist after my fusion wanted to thoroughly map up into my cervical area so he inserted the probe into my neck near my spine and I had to lean back into it. If there had been any state secrets I could have fessed up to, I probably would have. Finishing that part of the test had me in major streaming tears (there are times I think medical tests do a good job of mimicking medieval tortures). If you have to get it, grit your teeth and do it because it will give a very good idea of whether the nerve problems come from closer to the spine or farther along. But realize, it's not fun while it's happening. You probably won't remember the actual pain but I'd bet you'll remember the emotional distress of choosing to push up into the probe when every nerve is telling you to pull away. I did mine cold without anything in my system. Don't know if drugs would affect the results. Ask your doctor if there's anything that might help with making it not quite so memorable an occasion. As barbaric as it might seem, it is a pretty good test for measuring how the nerves are functioning and where the problems might lie. It was the only way I was able to convince the skeptical and extremely uninformed about TOS, docs that my problems weren't carpal. In my book, making sure I didn't get a totally unnecessary carpal surgery was well worth the brief discomforts.