New Criteria

February 12, 2010 — Investigators are proposing new diagnostic standards for multiple sclerosis in clinically isolated syndromes. Their criteria are less stringent than other proposals and are designed to improve sensitivity to promote early diagnosis. etc.

New medscape article. The Neurology community is realizing they are taking too long to diagnose and start treatment.
Small miracle. Now if I walked into the Neurologist he would not say "Gee looks like MS but we need for you to not be able to walk before we can call it"

Alex

[LATW]

um, yeah.  Basically what was said to me today.
LA

[supermum_ms]

Hey Alex, do you have a link, love to read it, even little old me fits the CIS definition, of course that would mean ignoring all the other episodes i've had but still one was caught by my first MRI and neuro visit.

I dont think my brain is working today, too tired from a late late night, other wise i find it my self, appreciate a link.

Cheers.......JJ

[DawnYM]

YAY!!!!

[twopack]

Interesting.  Why not soften the standards?  It's been done in many other areas.

Normal fasting blood glucose used to be 80-120.  Now it's <100.  Normal blood pressure used to be 120/80 with borderline hypertension at 140/90.  I'm not sure what it is now but my tracker says pre-hypertension when I average 125/70.  "Normal" values for lipid levels have been dropped too.  My doc once told me that was done so early intervention and treatment could be accomplished.

Then again, many neuros seem to pay little attention to the present standards.  Why would they embrace a change?

Mary

[PastorDan]

Mary, you took the words right out of my mouth.  One more set of criteria to be ignored.

Oh, I think there's something in that list of "Let's change the criteria" events that tells me I once had a heart attack, years after they told me it wasn't a heart attack.  What wasn't one then is one now.  Something to do with an enzyme level in the blood.

Alex, I loved this line: "The Neurology community is realizing they are taking too long to diagnose and start treatment."  Have they been listening in to our board?  No, that would never happen.

[janereed]

I would love to read that article, is there a link to it?

[Guitar_grrrl]

Well, it's about time.  Our CIS folks need to be taken seriously, along with the rest of us.

Happy Friday,
Guitar_grrrl

[tonyad]

Wow!  It's about time!
Ditto to all of you who have said that doctors are taking way to long to dx (if they even do) and not take their patients seriously.

I too would love to read this article?  Could you direct us to it?
Thanks in advance,
~Tonya

[Lulu54]

Good evening,
I went looking for the article Alex referenced but got sidetracked at the Consortium for MS Care organization site with this very interesting look at the for/against argument of treating CIS.  

Not surprisingly from the frequent conversations we have here about the NHS, the neuro opposed to treating CIS is from the UK, while the one in favor is from the US.  

I thought you might find this one worth reading.

http://www.mscare.org/cmsc/images/journal/pdf/IJMS_summer_09_final_controversy.pdf

The medscape article is available with a FREE log in account  at

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/716914


be well,
Lulu

PS quix has written an explanaiton of CIS and you can find it by searching this community.