[The Landry-Guillain-Barré-Strohl-syndrome. Prognosis in adults (author's transl)]

Abstract

The clinical aspect of acute polyradiculitis (Landry-Guillain-Barré-Strohl syndrome) of 85 patients is resumed. 52 of these 85 patients were seen after an average of 5, 1 years, 8 were dead at the time of control and 25 could not be traced. Two patients died during the acute phase of polyradiculitis corresponding to a letality of 2%. 24 of the subjects (46%) had recovered completely, 28 (54%) showed some residual symptoms. Eleven patients (21%) had some residual weakness of hands and/or feet. Out of these eleven six (11% of total) were so much disabled that they received a disablement pension. 17 patients with slight sensory disturbances and/or some loss of reflexes were not handicapped in their every-day life. 20 patients were examined electrophysiologically during the follow-up. All the five patients with a pathological EMG also showed some clinical residual signs. A positive correlation between pathological conduction velocities in the median and/or deep peroneal nerve and clinical residua was only inconstantly found. Patients with severe tetraparesis during the acute phase had more often residual symptoms. The time from the maximum motor deficiency to the beginning of recovery was longer in the latter group than in patients without residual symptoms (23 respectively 8 days) while there was no difference of the time between the beginning of motor weakness and the maximum motor deficiency in the two groups. A treatment with ACTH and/or corticosteroids seemed not to influence the long term prognosis of the illness.