The medical literature on the evaluation of autonomic dysfunction accumulated discordant results in the past decades, accentuating the need of validating the proposed tests. The Ewing's tests for studying autonomic abnormalities received increasing acceptance, as they recognize not only cardiovascular reflexes damage but lesions in any other segments of the autonomic nervous system. We proposed to validate them in our population by analysing their results on 30 normal individuals and 23 long-standing diabetics. Our results show that the five tests are highly sensitive and specific, reproducible, use simple and available office material, and fulfil their purpose.
autonomic dysfunction; autonomic nervous system; diabetes; Ewing's tests; autonomic dysfunction testing
