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. 2024 Jan 8:9:63-68.
doi: 10.1016/j.cnp.2024.01.001. eCollection 2024.

Sensory nerve conduction studies in infants, children and teenagers - An update

Tom Frenzel  1 , Anne-Katrin Baum  1 , Hardy Krause  2 , Christoph Arens  3   4 , Aiden Haghikia  1 , Imke Galazky  1
Affiliations

Sensory nerve conduction studies in infants, children and teenagers - An update

Tom Frenzel et al. Clin Neurophysiol Pract. .

Abstract

Objective: Nerve conduction studies (NCS) in children remain technically challenging and depend on the cooperation of the child. Motor NCS are not compromised by analgosedation but data for sensory NCS are lacking. Here, we ask whether sensory NCS is influenced by analgosedation. We also compare the present data with NCS studies from the 1990s regarding anthropometric acceleration of the contemporary paediatric population.

Methods: Sensory NCS of the median nerve and sural nerve were performed in 182 healthy subjects aged 1 to 18 years during general anaesthesia and in 47 of them without analgosedation.

Results: Sensory NCS was not influenced by midazolam or propofol. The sensory nerve action potential (SNAP) amplitude and the nerve conduction velocity (NCV) of the sural nerve as well as the SNAP of the median nerve show no significant age dependence in age range 1-18 years. The sensory NCV of the median nerve increased age-dependent.

Conclusions: In clinical practice, analgosedation can be used for diagnostic NCS. Sensory NCS data show no relevant secular trend over the last 30 years. Differences due to technical inconsistency predominate.

Significance: Analgosedation can improve diagnostic quality of sensory NCS in children. Additionally, we provide sensory NCS values from a large pediatric cohort.

Keywords: Acceleration; Analgosedation; Children; Reference values; Sensory nerve conduction study.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Electrode positions for orthodromic sensory NCS of the median nerve using a ring electrode (A) and sural nerve using a block electrode (B). a: cathode (stimulation), b: anode (stimulation), c: cathode (registration), d: anode (registration), e: ground electrode.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Sural nerve fiber sum action potential examined in an 8-year-old boy (amplitude: 11 µV, conduction velocity: 50 m/s).
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Nerve conduction velocity of median nerve (A) and sural nerve (B) and amplitude of median nerve (C) and sural nerve (D) in age dependent scatter charts. The solid lines show the corresponding regression model, the dashed lines show the associated 95% confidence interval.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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