Quantitative surface EMG in the diagnosis of neuromuscular disorders

This paper describes a non-invasive quantitative method for the diagnosis of neuromuscular disorders using surface EMG (sEMG). We found sEMG to be a reliable method that can be used to differentiate neuropathic and myopathic patients from the normal subjects. The multivariate discriminant analysis of sEMG data assisted in separating myopathic from neuropathic disorders. Nevertheless sEMG is not robust enough to replace needle EMG as a stand-alone diagnostic tool. However quantitative sEMG that is described in this paper could be adopted as a simple, rapid and non-invasive technique to be used in the out patients clinic by EMG-naive clinicians as a screening method for neuromuscular disorders, before referring the patients for detailed clinical neurophysiological examinations.