Admission neurophysiological abnormalities in Guillain-Barré syndrome: A single-center experience

Although patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) are often hospitalized few days after symptoms onset, nerve conduction studies (NCS) abnormalities in early phases of the disease are not well characterized. Our aim was to report early neurophysiological abnormalities from a cohort of GBS patients.

In this single-center study, we retrospectively reviewed the NCS data of 71 consecutive GBS patients in whom neurophysiology was performed within two weeks after disease onset. We further divided our cohort in three subgroups according to the interval between disease onset and NCS (≤ 4 days; 5-7 days; 8-14 days).

A great proportion of patients (37%) with an early NCS (≤ 4 days) showed normal neurophysiological results. The most altered parameters were F waves and their proportion increases in correspondence to number of days after onset. Conduction blocks were observed preferentially in upper limbs, in about a third of cases.

This study confirms that NCS may be normal in the early phases of GBS syndrome and suggests to perform an extensive neurophysiological evaluation in these patients.

Our results may help the clinicians in the interpretation of NCS in early-onset GBS.