Application of Neurophysiological Studies in Clinical Neurology

임상신경생리 분야에서의 신경생리적 검사법의 응용

Since Hans Berger reported the first paper on the human electroencephalogram in 1920s, huge technological advance have made it possible to use a number of electrophysiological approaches to neurological diagnosis in clinical neurology. In majority of the neurology training hospitals they have facilities of electroencephalography(EEG), electromyography(EMG), evoked potentials(EP), polysomnography(PSG), electronystagmography(ENG) and, transcranial doppler(TCD) ete. Clinicials and electrophysiologists should understand the technologic characteristics and general applications of each electrophysiological studies to get useful informations with using them in clinics. It is generally agreed that items of these tests are selected under the clinical examination, the tests are performed by the experts, and the test results are interpretated under the clinical background. Otherwise these tests are sometimes useless and lead clinicians to misunderstand the lesion site, the nature of disease, or the disease course. In this sense the clinical utility of neurophysiological tests could be summerized in the followings. First, the abnormal functioning of the nervous system and its environments can be demonstrated when the history and neurological examinations are equivocal. Second, the presence of clinically unsuspected malfunction in the nervous system can be revealed by those tests. Finally the objective changes can be monitored over time in the patient's status. Also intraoperative monitoring technique becomes one of the important procedures when the major operations in the posterior fossa or in the spinal cord are performed. In 1996, the Korean Society for Clinical Neurophysiology(KSCN) was founded with the hope that it will provide the members with the comfortable place for discussing their clinical and academic experience, exchanging new informations, and learning new techniques of the neurophysiological tests. The KSCN could collaborate with the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology(IFCN) to improve the level of the clinical neurophysiologic field in Korea as will as in Asian region.1 In this paper the clinical neurophysiological tests which are commonly used in clinical neurology and which will be delt with and educated by the KSCN in the future will be discussed briefly in order of EEG, EMG, EP, PSG, TCD, ENG, and Intraoperative monitoring.