5. Conclusion
Our data showed no significant differences in diameters and cross-sectional areas of the VIIth and VIIIth cranial nerves between the affected and the clinically non-affected side of unilaterally affected patients with MD after Bonferroni correction for multiple testing. There was also no correlation to duration of clinical symptoms. This may potentially point toward a systemic process starting long before the onset of first clinical symptoms. On the other hand, it could also indicate that there is no change in the 7th and 8th cranial nerves in MD. However, this contradicts our previous study, which showed thicker nerves in patients with MD compared to a healthy control group (8).
Normative nerve diameters should only be used if comparable MRI sequence parameters are used as our data showed different means for the same patients at the same measuring points depending on the MRI sequences used.