Plasma exchange versus intravenous immunoglobulin treatment in myasthenic crisis

A I Qureshi1, M A Choudhry, M S Akbar

  • 1Department of Neurology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Neurology
|February 20, 1999
PubMed

We performed a retrospective multicenter chart review to compare the efficacy and tolerance of plasma exchange (PE) and intravenous immunoglobulin (i.v.Ig) in treatment of 54 episodes of myasthenic crisis. After adjustment for other variables, PE (compared with i.v.Ig) was associated with a superior ventilatory status at 2 weeks (partial F = 6.2, p = 0.02) and 1 month functional outcome (partial F = 4.5, p = 0.04). However, the complication rate was higher with PE compared with i.v.Ig (13 versus 5 episodes, p = 0.07).

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