A Cohort of Acute, Ischemic and Rare Neuropathies

Neuropathies are defined as the clinical, electrical, biological and histological manifestations of peripheral neuron damage. They represent a heterogeneous group of disorders and are responsible for disabling sensory and motor disorders. Their diagnosis is based on a set of clinical arguments confirmed by the electromyogram. This allows to specify the site of the damage, its severity, and to follow the evolution of the disease. To date, the diagnosis of peripheral nerve injury secondary to occlusion of arterial trunks is rarely evoked; its clinical, electromyographic and prognostic characteristics are poorly known. Indeed, the rare cases reported in the literature are from vascular specialties, with little data on neurological symptoms, neurophysiological diagnostic elements and prognosis. However, these unrecognized and underdiagnosed neuropathies are sometimes indicative of severe vascular damage for which urgent management is necessary. Neurological symptoms should then be treated as warning signs and the correct recognition of the early ischemic vascular etiology may lead to an optimized medical management. The objectives of this study will be to describe the clinical presentation of these neuropathies, to discuss their electrophysiological diagnostic characteristics, to compare the demographic data with those from the literature, and to evaluate the functional prognosis of these attacks. A better knowledge of this rare etiology of neuropathy would allow to better inform the patients and to optimize the diagnostic and therapeutic management.