NCS Differing Results
 

I've had several NCS performed over the last 3 years. Symptoms have been tingling, pain, involuntary movement in feet/hands and sometimes face. I've had positive NCS test results multiple times that indicated a progressing peripheral neuropathy. Last week I went to a very well known university. They repeated the NCS and said that it was completely normal (just had one locally about 2 months ago that indicated the progressing neuropathy).

Anyone with similar experiences with positive/negative NCS results? Should I assume either is correct or do you do another one to try to find out?

Any ideas? What should I do??????

Is there anyone in the family who has similar symptoms such as you have? Thank you.

First, thank you so much for responding. This is such a tough thing to go through!

Nobody that I can find in our family has any of these symptoms.

Hopefully you will get an answer.

NCS/EMG's are actually quite subjective and can vary widely from doctor to doctor, the eqipment they use, nerves & muscles tested. I've had several that say "normal," but I know this is not the case as I have long fiber axonal damage in both lower extremities, left greater than right. I've decided not to have another one of these in my lifetime unless some dramatic motor nerve changes show up.

The best advice I've heard is to use the same doctor/technician if you are going to do serial testing. Too much variation otherwise. And I would trust results more from a large teaching hospital with a neurodiagnostic dept.

Thank you for your reply.

I thought the same thing about the neurodiagnostic department at the university. Unfortunately, they spent literally 7 minutes -- the technician bragged she could do in 7 mins and actually did it. I've had tests at multiple locations locally, and they all had very similar results. Thus, the confusion on what to believe.

The one thing I do know is that the symptoms are there, and unfortunately getting worse. I just don't know what's causing it and the tests were making me wonder if we should be looking in a different direction than PN. SFN, MS, etc.....

I just had two done at two well known places. I am hoping to get the "numbers" from the second one soon. Both took about 15-20 minutes.
Both were negative.

I will try to weigh in when I can compare both.

So sorry for all the stuff happening. Even tests have so much variability and unfortunately the docs really focus on this and NOT SO MUCH on the patient's symptoms.

Take care.

I thought that was very quick (7 mins) as the earlier versions I had were about the same as yours -- around 20 - 30 minutes.

Thanks, I will look forward to hearing your results. It's so frustrating, but it's nice to know that I'm not the only one that's dealing with strange results like this.