CIDP Insights: Navigating Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy

Other Abnormal Sensations

An individual may feel other abnormal sensations or experience paresthesia when affected by chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy. Affected individuals sometimes describe these abnormal sensations like the feeling of pins and needles in the affected part of the body. This sensation is the same type of feeling that occurs when a healthy individual sits on top of their foot for an extended period. Other sensations reported in CIDP patients include achiness or burning pain. Some individuals explain this sensation to be a form of itchiness or prickling. These abnormal sensations may occur in individuals with CIDP on a constant or intermittent basis depending on the severity of their illness. These abnormal sensations may radiate from one spot out to other regions. The presence and extent of abnormal sensations in an individual affected by CIDP is dependent on how much damage the myelin sheathing around their nerves has sustained. The poor conduction of impulses or the partial conduction of impulses due to the absence of the myelin sheath causes a patient to feel abnormal sensations.

Double Vision

Diplopia is a term used to describe when an individual sees a double image of a single object. It is also called double vision. The two different images an affected individual sees can be one on top of the other, side by side, or both. Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy can cause damage to the nerves in the brain responsible for the transmission of visual information or the nerves responsible for operating the muscles that control the movements of the eyes. In a healthy individual, the nerves in the peripheral and central nervous systems are protected by a fatty substance referred to as myelin. This myelin sheath helps the nerves conduct impulses better. The myelin sheath around the nerves in a chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy patient becomes damaged and breaks down. When this malfunction affects the muscles responsible for eye movement, the affected individual may experience double vision.