Small fiber peripheral neuropathy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is uncategorized.
Please help improve this article by adding it to one or more categories, so it may be associated with related articles (how?). Please remove this tag after categorizing. |
This disorder is also called Small Fiber Neuropathy and Small Fiber Sensory Neuropathy (SFSN). Small nerve fibers are the nerve fibers near the skins surface, which is why the symptoms deal with sensation. Usually the symptoms start in the feet and lower legs.
The symptoms are insensitivity to heat and/or cold, tingling, numbness, Muscle weakness, Cramps, pain, and other symptoms. People say the pain is like an ice pick being poked into bone, like an electric shock, or walking on broken glass. Sometimes the pain causes a loss in the ability to feel when injury occurs, so you may be bleeding or have a skin injury and not even know it.
Unfortunately it is a disorder diagnosed by ruling out everything else. In fact, Electromyography (EMG tests), which are good in diagnosing other neuropathies are usually not good in detecting small fiber neuropathies. In some cases it can be diagnosed by biopsy, but that would still not affect treatment of the symptoms. Sometimes this disorder is caused by diabetes or alcoholism, but most of the time it is idiopathic. Since there are no known causes for most cases and most tests do not identify it, not much money is spent on curing idiopathic cases.
There is no current treatment to cure small fiber peripheral neuropathy. For forms caused by diabetes, toxins, or diabetes, those underlying condition are treated to reduce progression of the disease and symptoms. For cases without those conditions there is only treatment of the symptoms.
