We confirmed that the pain threshold was elevated in early diabetic neuropathy. We conclude that the IES electrode is a useful tool to evaluate early diabetic polyneuropathy. Muscle Nerve 54: 146-149, 2016.
The efficacy of LSVT-BIG for advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with wearing off remains to be determined. Therefore, we evaluated whether LSVT-BIG improves motor disability in eight PD patients with wearing off. Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) scores, daily off time, and mobility assessments were evaluated during the “on” time before and after the LSVT-BIG course. LSVT-BIG significantly improved UPDRS III scores at 4 weeks and UPDRS II scores in the “off” state at 12 weeks, with no changes in the other measures. The findings suggest that LSVT-BIG may be an effective therapy for advanced PD patients with wearing off.
Administering intravenous recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (r-tPA) within 4.5 h or endovascular procedures within 8 h of ischemic stroke onset may reduce the risk of disability. The effectiveness of media campaigns to raise stroke awareness and shorten pre-hospital delay is unclear. We studied 1144 consecutive ischemic stroke patients at Aomori Prefectural Central Hospital, Japan, between March 2010 and February 2014. From March 2012, the government sponsored an educational campaign based on a television commercial to improve knowledge of stroke symptoms and encourage ambulance calls for facial palsy, arm palsy, or speech disturbance. For the 544 and 600 patients admitted before and during the intervention, respectively, we recorded the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, stroke type, the time when patients or bystanders recognized stroke symptoms, and hospital arrival time. Pre-hospital delay, as the time interval from awareness of stroke to hospital arrival, was categorized as 0-3, 3-6, and 6+ h. The mean pre-hospital delay was shorter (12.0 vs 13.5 h; P = 0.0067), the proportion of patients arriving within 3 h was larger (55.7 vs 46.5 %; P = 0.0021), and the proportion arriving after 6 h was smaller (32.7 vs 39.5 %; P = 0.0162) in the intervention group than in the pre-intervention group. There was no significant difference in the proportion of patients treated with r-tPA (6 and 7.5 % of the intervention and pre-intervention groups, respectively). A television-based public education campaign potentially reduced pre-hospital delay for ischemic stroke patients, but the r-tPA treatment rate was unchanged.
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