ANS Test

ANS is a diagnostic tool to evaluate symptoms of vasomotor instability for any of the following:

• Diagnose the presence of autonomic neuropathy in a patient with symptoms suggesting a progressive autonomic neuropathy, including Diabetic neuropathy, Amyloid neuropathy, Sjogren’s syndrome, Idiopathic neuropathy, Pure autonomic failure, and Multiple system dystrophy.
• Evaluate the severity and distribution of a diagnosed progressive autonomic neuropathy.
• Differentiate the diagnosis between certain variants of syncope from other causes of loss of consciousness.
• Evaluate inadequate response to beta blockade in vasodepressor syncope.
• Differentiate the cause of postural tachycardia syndrome.
• Evaluate change in type, distribution or severity of autonomic deficits in patients with autonomic failure.
• Evaluate the response to treatment in patients with autonomic failure.
• Diagnose axonal neuropathy or suspected autonomic neuropathy in the symptomatic patient.
• Evaluate and diagnose sympathetically maintained pain, as in reflex sympathetic dystrophy or causalgia.
• Evaluate and treat patients with recurrent unexplained syncope to demonstrate autonomic failure.
• Detects and records variations in the R-R, or beat-to-beat, interval, and respiratory activity and plots this data.
• Data undergo spectral analysis to identify high- and low-frequency components of the heartbeat interval (HBI) plot.
• Performs spectral analysis of the respiratory signal to precisely locate the parasympathetic, or high-frequency, a component of the HBI signal.
• Respiratory activity analysis provides independent and more specific measurements of sympathetic activity and parasympathetic activity at rest to determine the balance between the branches, during individual challenges to each branch, and a combined challenge to both branches to detect degrees of neuropathy or ANS branch suppression or excess.