Axonal type

[Ana Maria Martinez]

Since the end of April my father (64 years old) is suffering Guillain Barre syndrome. The diagnostic was quite fast (he had a quite strong diarrea (diarrhea) and feber the week before) and the same day he went to the hospital they started a inmonuglobulin treatment. He did not need a respirator.
Now he is at home but he needs constant help since he cannot still move hands and arms.
The doctors said that he has a quite severe axonal type of Guillain Barre and although he seems to recover little by little they cannot say anything about his development so we are very worried about it.
Does any one know anything about the recovery of such type of patients?
Thank you very much for your help.
Ana

[CCF Neuro[P] MD, RPS]

Dear Ana:

Sorry to hear about your father.  How do the physicians know that your father has the axonal type of Guillian-Barre?  This form is much rarer that the demyelinating type.  Recovery depends alot on the degree of compromise, extent of the disease, and the individual patient.  Recovery is not instant but even the mildest cases takes months.  The really severe cases (respiratory compromise) will take years and most do not recover completely.  So, the recovery has a range, from complete to incomplete.  Without examinining your father it is difficult to tell, but he did not require intubation (the mechanical ventillator) which is good.  It is still very early in the course of the recovery.  He will need to really stick with it and the family encouragement and help will go a great distance to help recoery and eventual recovery (to what ever extent).

I hope I have helped.  Sorry, it was not more specific.

Sincerely,

CCF Neuro MD

[tania again, add to question]

Does this answer by the CCF,about the disease not being complete yet, mean that in a year a neuro could tell this person these symptoms were really symptoms of ALS they just weren't manifested and picked up earlier?  How long does it take before the worriesome diseases can OFFICIALLY be ruled out?  By the way the neuro answered, they can't completely rule them out yet.  Does anyone else get this picture?

[CCF Neuro[P] MD, RPS]

I am not sure how ALS got involved in this posting.  This is axonal GBS and not an unknown entity.  Severe GBS does not resolve in weeks but in terms of many months of rehab.

CCF Neuro MD

[No guarantee]

They don't rule em out for legal purposes among other things.As for as ALS goes, diagnosis is between 6 -18 months.There's always exceptions,but no abnormal EMG, coupled with no atrophy, muscular weakness make a diagnosis of ALS almost nil. Yes, the twitches may still be present but,oh for god sake CCF Neuro, wanna make a fortune, write a study on all the causes of fasiculations other than Motor Neuron Disease and publish it. The twitchers will all buy a copy and you'll be richer than your wildest dreams.This seems off topic, but not really, I suspect we have a BFS poster above.

[LULA880818]

A related discussion, Gullain-Barré was started.