Case Report Critical Illness Neuropathy

Critical illness neuropathy frequently accompanies the septic syndrome in inten-sive care units. Another entity that may occur independently or concurrently in crit-ically ill patients is a myopathy, giving rise to difficulties in distinguishing between them. The two patients described had sensorimotor axonal peripheral neuropathy. Ax-onopathy as a rule has a poor prognosis for recovery, which is slow and often incom-plete. There are few reports of the functional outcome after rehabilitation therapy. The two patients described had 5-6 weeks of active rehabilitation therapy with improve-ment from moderate/severe disability at the onset to slight debility at the end of ther-apy. Key Words: Septic syndrome—Systemic inflammatory response syndrome—Crit-ical illness neuropathy—Rehabilitation. Sepsis and multiple organ failure are significant prob-lems in intensive care units and constitute a syndrome. now called the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) (1). It is often accompanied by a form or degen-erativ’e po)yneuropathy referred to as critical illness ncu