Polyneuropathy - Aetiology, Gender Distribution and Average Age in East Austria: A Retrospective Analysis of the Data of 278 Patients

Polyneuropathy (PNP) is a disseminated neurological disorder of the peripheral nervous system (PNS). Polyneuropathies have motor, sensory or autonomic involvement. Often motor and sensory malfunctions occur at the same time. PNP is one of the most often diagnosed neurological disorders and for the most part, it is an accompanying disease. Diagnostic procedures and aetiological analyses for Austria are non-existent; therefore analyses of other countries, mostly from Germany, must be imported. Our Study is a comparison of those analyses with the first survey data in Austria on this topic. 505 medical discharge letters of patients with the diagnosis "polyneuropathy" or "poly neuropathy (not otherwise specified), neuropathy (not otherwise specified)", who were inpatients between 01.01.2006 to 31.12.2010 (in KH Hietzing, Neurological Center " Rosenhugel", 2 nd neurological department), were analysed. Altogether, 278 patients, with an apparent PNP, were included in the study. 18 diagnoses (risk factors) were defined, partly based on pre-studies. As expected, the diabetes PNP shows a significant predominance (31.7 %), as well as the aetiologically unknown polyneuropathies (16.2 %), despite the high diagnostic efforts. The alcoholic PNP is the third most common aetiology (12.2 %), as expected. The newly defined multifactorial PNP (9.4 %) is the last large group, in which also diabetes and alcohol abuse (often in combination) were very common. Furthermore the patient collective was tested for gender distribution and average age. The analysis showed a 2: 1 risk for men to develop PNP, as well as an average age of 65 years in both sexes.