“Is a nerve conduction test painful?”
I'm 30 and been having numbness in my left hand and fingers. My doctor recommended a nerve conduction test. Is it painful?
3 Answers
In most cases no, if no complications occur or are present.
Ram S. Garg
Neurologist
No. The nerve conduction requires small electric shocks to measure function of the nerves.
Robert M. Miska
Neurologist
It's always difficult to reliably predict someone else's experience of discomfort. That said, I would describe the nerve conduction (NC) test as merely trivially annoying or minimally uncomfortable, not painful. It involves delivery of brief small-current shocks to peripheral nerves in order to elicit and record both motor and sensory responses. Most instruments used for NC studies can deliver a maximum current (DC) of 0.1 Ampere, which is quite small, yet would feel like a fairly good "jolt" when delivered to an individual nerve. Almost all shocks used in testing are considerably smaller than this, however. Some patients find that it helps to take a dose of 400-800mg of ibuprofen before the test. Having performed thousands of these tests, I've found that almost all patients tolerate them quite easily.
