sensory only neuropathies...
 

Can anyone out there share what got them the diagnosis?

Doctor now just says I have a skin disturbance of unknown origin.

I am trying to decide now if I should go to Mayo or not.

TIA.

Mine was diagnosed with a skin biopsy. What does he mean by skin disturbance?

That is my diagnosis now. I am very concerned by his correspondence and focusing on "my anxiety." I don't want that to impact my treatment. It is so upsetting to have so little time with doctor's that they really can't see that anxiety is the result of the symptoms, not the cause.

Any amount of face time can let a person know that there are deep rooted psychological problems or not. Just get so little face time.

Each visit time averages 5-7 minutes!

How long did you have symptoms by the time you had the skin biopsy?

Thanks so much!:hug:

My neuro diagnosed me in 6 months. I was lucky I had someone who really listened. 6-7 mins is a very short appt. Both my neuro amend rheumo give me at 20 mins.

You may have already said but are you seeing your GP for this or a neuro?

A big head of a department Neuro-probably not that great. Down south there is a HUGE shortage of doctors and excellent customer service.:eek:

I am also curious--
 

--what is meant by a "skin distrubance"?

Obviously, there are a lot of skin conditions that can produce all sorts of unusual sensory sensation by affecting the nerves, but these don't start in the nerves, and are different from, say, a small-fiber neuropathy that produces numbness or parastheses (disturbed sensations) through direct damage to the nerves.

Do you have any evident rash, or discoloration?

I guess it is a catch all and they are not going to diagnose by physical exam.
No evidence of rash or discoloration.
Not sure what is going on with their diagnosis:disturbance of skin sensation.

Thanks so much.

You really need a skin biopsy to confirm or rule out small fiber neuropathy.

Not much can be done in 5-7 minutes...except ask for the biopsy maybe.

So, how soon will the damage show up on a skin biopsy?

It is probably too soon for a biopsy.

If the dorsal roots are causing the pain (like from viruses), the biopsy would not show damage for quite a while. Long term damage from the dorsal roots along the spine, will cause atrophy in the periphery.(this has been shown in animals so far).

The explanation is in our dorsal root thread in the subforum.
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread147771.html

This is a collection of diagrams of the dorsal roots from Google images:
https://www.google.com/search?q=dors...ed=0CAYQ_AUoAQ

My guess would be that "disturbance of skin sensation" might be a description for something like insurance coding. I used to always see "numbness" written in my records but I've never had numbness or described anything near it; I finally assumed that it was a word that just fit neatly in whatever checklist they were using.

It may be too soon for fiber density to be significantly and abnormally low...but the condition of the fibers them self, might (and I think likely would) show swelling and/ or segmented & tortuous fibers...and indication that nerve damage exists.

If it's in the dorsal root, you may not find proof just yet.

Dear baba222,

I know that you have several threads and I did NOT go back and read the others so my comments are limited to THIS thread ONLY. Because I am not up to date on any other history of information you may have previously provided, my response here may not be relevant but here it is based only on this tread.

First let me say that the terminology skin "disturbance" is NOT the same as skin "condition".

The word "disturbance" is a very general term and may be applied to a great many conditions in different areas of medicine.

A skin "disturbance" could be neurological. It could be dermatological. It could be many various things and I personally think that the doctor was being very generalized because the etiology of your symptoms are unknown, limited to sensory skin and you do not have muscular involvement.

If you google skin disturbance, you get ICD 9 code of 782.0 and ICD-10 code of R20.

There are many neuropathies that do not involve the muscles and only affect the sensory nerves which are found in skin. This is why an EMG and an NCS would be normal.

Finding the cause of your "skin disturbance" can be a long and difficult road and will include many tests to rule out other possibilities. Just because some tests come back normal does not mean you do not have legitimate symptoms. It simply means certain conditions may be ruled out and guide the physician (acting as a detective many times) down other roads of possibilities. One of those roads is a skin biopsy.

There are a lot of questions I would ask but you may have already answered in your other threads, like what are your symptoms, what body parts are affected, etc. but I won't now.

Even after all possible tests have been performed, you may still not have an answer as to what is causing your symptoms. It will then be termed idiopathic, meaning of unknown origin.

Good luck in finding a diagnosis more specific than "skin disturbance" and a cause. Some neurological conditions do affect only the sensory nerves and not motor nerves.

"Skin disturbance" includes paresthesia and many other neurological symptoms.

Good luck to you.

Hi baba222,

Just wanted to add one more comment that I failed to mention in my earlier post.

There are 12,512 causes listed for "skin disturbances", symptoms and sensations. (Maybe more.) And that number may not include all disciplines of medicine.

This is why I said the physician must play "detective" and why the cause of your symptoms may be unknown (idiopathic).

Good luck.