|
þ Polio Findings Revealed in Previously Assumed Unaffected Limbs — The following excerpt is taken from the Fall 2006 issue of Post-Polio Health, referencing results on testing of muscles that were originally thought unaffected by polio:
“As part of the discussion at the Ninth International Post-Polio health and Ventilator-Assisted Living Conference: Strategies for Living Well (Saint Louis, 2005) about exercise and overuse of muscles by polio survivors, Chanda Mayo-For, MD, presented her senior research project completed at National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) under the direction of Lauro S. Halstead, MD. The statistics from the study show nerve damage in 40.5% of limbs that polio survivors regarded as “unaffected.”
The question and answer discussion indicated that improved testing with macro or single fiber EMG would probably reveal that an even larger percentage of unaffected limbs would show nerve damage from sub clinical (not diagnosed) polio.
Consequently, medical practitioners treating polio survivors, and survivors themselves, should take into account sub clinical polio nerve damage in an unaffected limb. When an EMG study is unavailable, Dr. Mayo-Ford’s study concludes that the best tool to use in assessing if an unaffected limb has polio damage is the manual muscle test, evaluating for weakness and atrophy.”
Please note: EMG testing often gives false negatives and additional studies do sometimes detect polio. More advanced EMG methods would probably identify sub clinical polio.
|
