Marieke van Rosmalen

Diagnostic value of quantitative assessment of brachial plexus MRI in chronic inflammatory neuropathies 61 4 RESULTS Patients We included a total of 123 patients (CIDP = 50, MMN = 31, disease controls = 42). Patient characteristics are summarized in Table 4.1 . Patients with MMN were younger than patients with CIDP and disease controls ( p < 0.001). We found no significant differences in other baseline characteristics between groups. Table 4.1 Patient characteristics Parameter Inflammatory neuropathy Motor neuron disease Level of significance CIDP MMN Number of patients 50 31 42 - Age, years (SD) 63.8 (9.4) 52.5 (11.7) 63.1 (11.2) < 0.001* Male (%) 42 (84.0%) 29 (93.5%) 31 (73.8%) 0.083 Disease duration, months (SD) 33.6 (65.2) 61.8 (80.5) 45.4 (38.1) 0.143 Nerve conduction study Inconclusive (%) 14 (28.0%) 7 (22.6%) - Possible (CIDP)/Slowing of conduction (MMN) (%) 9 (18.0%) 3 (9.6%) - Probable (%) 2 (4.0%) 3 (9.6%) - Definite (%) 25 (50.0%) 18 (58.1%) - Ultrasound Normal (%) 10 (20.0%) 6 (19.4%) 5 (11.9%) Abnormal (%) 35 (70.0%) 25 (80.6%) 3 (7.1%) Missing (%) 5 (10.0%) 0 (0.0%) 34 (81.0%) * Age differs significantly between patients with MMN and patients with CIDP, and between patients with MMN and disease controls. Nerve root measurements on MRI Feasibility of measuring method Table 4.2 summarizes the number of measurements per nerve root that could be performed successfully. We obtained more measurements at G 0 compared to G 1 ( p < 0.001). Measurements in the coronal plane were more often successful than in the sagittal plane ( p < 0.001). We established that this was mostly related to early merging or dividing nerve roots and the fact that images showed lower image quality more distally.