Abstract
Background and Objectives: Multiple sclerosis is one of the most important neurologic diseases because of frequency and tendency to affect young adults. The identification of patients with clinically silent lesions is important, because early therapies are demonstrated to be effective in preventing or delaying disability in MS patients. Some physiologic and radiologic tests such as MRI and evoked potentials can discover asymptomatic lesions. MRI is a choice method in diagnosis, and BAEP is a non-invasive method with greater capacity and a lower cost in disclosing brainstem plaques.This study is designed for comparing the role of these two tests in MS patients.
Materials and Methods: Thirty patients which have had definite MS criteria clinically and paraclinically without brainstem involvement have been taken part in this study, they have been performed BAEP and MRI, which the abnormal findings in BAEP were mainly based on interpeak latencies I-III> 2.5 ms, III-V> 2 and latency of wave V> 5.7 ms. Finally, the findings of these two methods have been compared.
Results: BAEP in 33.3% of patients and MRI in 36.66% of patients were abnormal. The rate of synchronization of abnormality between two tests in all patients was 13.3%; however, the involvements of brainstem by both methods were 56.6% of cases. So, in high percent of patients with definite MS which have had involved asymptomatic brain stem, combined use of these two methods cause identifying more positive cases. Comparison between BAEP & MRI abnormalities and sex, types of disease and duration of disease didn’t show significant difference.
Conclusion: BAEP is a good Method in evaluating of brainstem Involvement with emphasis on brainstem. However, there is no significant differentiation between two methods in determiniting positive cases of brainstem involvement. Therefore, neither of these two methods could replace each other in following of the definite MS patients with brainstem involvement, but combined use of these tests could be identified more positive cases.