-
Review
Intraoperative nerve action potential recordings: technical considerations, problems, and pitfalls.
- Everett G Robert, Leo T Happel, and David G Kline.
- Department of Neurosurgery, Louisiana State University Health Science Center, New Orleans, Louisiana 70112, USA. erobert@lsuhsc.edu
- Neurosurgery. 2009 Oct 1; 65 (4 Suppl): A97-104.
ObjectiveThe purpose of this article is to provide our experience with intraoperative nerve action potential (NAP) recordings. In particular, we focus on a discussion of the technical considerations of intraoperative NAP with emphasis on identifying and remedying problems and pitfalls.MethodsWe report, perhaps, the largest operative series of peripheral nerve lesions in continuity with intraoperative NAP recording derived from 1736 patients with 3459 lesions in continuity with operative outcomes. We pay special attention to patients for whom we felt that NAP recordings were either difficult or misleading.ResultsA positive NAP across a lesion resulting in neurolysis gave grade 3 or better function using the Louisiana State University Health Science Center grading system in 94.7% of neural elements. Differential fascicular recordings resulted in split repair in 62 nerves with recovery in 58. The absence of an NAP correlated histologically with a neurotmetic lesion. With resultant repair, 1111 of 1975 nerves recovered to grade 3 or better.ConclusionVisual inspection of a nerve lesion in continuity can be misleading. Although there is no "head-to-head" comparison of our data with data obtained without the use of intraoperative NAP recordings, we feel strongly that with experience and knowledge of the problems and pitfalls regarding intraoperative recording techniques, one may take advantage of the great benefits of this very useful and informative surgical tool.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:
![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.