Restless Leg Syndrome – Diagnosis

Transcript

The diagnosis of RLS, if it bothers somebody, is easy to make and probably close to a hundred percent, sometimes you would get confused because other things can mimic RLS such as peripheral neuropathy. Cause that’s also considered pins and needles in the legs and feet that disturb people more at rest and at night time. So for some diseases, we have to tease them out for what the real problem is. But typically since restless leg syndrome, like any disease is on a spectrum. Sometimes symptoms are very mild and they don’t bother the patient. And so it’s not really brought to anybody’s attention and they can live with it. On the other hand, sometimes it’s really severe and those are the patients that I see in my office, but the diagnosis is more commonly known about and more publicly known about. And now the restless legs foundation has made itself very public there’s good resources on the internet TV commercials, advertising pharmaceutical agents have actually made it more common.

Generally I don’t like commercials prescribing drugs to patients, but in this particular case, a lot of people have come out of the woodwork and said, Oh gosh, this is a problem that I’ve had my entire life. My family has it. I didn’t actually know it had a diagnosis. So the public awareness is great, but mild symptoms don’t need to be treated and severe symptoms invariably show up in a doctor’s office because they really can bother a person. But again, restless legs is unusual in that certain times of our lives, it may be worse. And then after the pregnancy or after the medication is withdrawn, it goes away. So sometimes people will have a lifelong history and other times it just may be when a woman’s pregnant once or twice or three times with her child. And that’s the only time it bothers your life. Treatment there is easy, have a healthy baby and so long to RLS.