Brief Answer: Hi and welcome to HCM Detailed Answer: ALS is a very difficult disease to diagnose and several tests are required to confirm or rule out the diagnosis. there is no one test or procedure to ultimately establish the diagnosis of ALS so many factors are investigated such as medical history, physical exmaination, emg,mri, muscle biopsy, myelogram. Spinal tap can detect certain proteins and antibodies which could indicate als but also many other autoimmune diseases so it can be sign of some less serious disorder. But if you have symptomatology of als and positive spinal test,unfortunately there is big chance of having alsa and treatment should be started as soon as possible. Wish you good health. Regards

---

Brief Answer: hi Detailed Answer: I understand your concerns. LS is very serious disease and bad scenario is inevitable,although it is not easy to predict lifetime after the diagnosis is established and it depends from man to man. Issac's would be better "option" but this is not the first thing to think of because of its rarity and not typical age for it. It can be usually differentiated from ALS by EMG features and certain antibodies in blood test. As I said, neuropathies and other neurologic disorders are not easily diagnosed because of nonspecific symptoms and the fact that there is no conclusive test for each disease. But accuracy in diagnosis raises when multiple tests are done and if all standard tests for his symptomatology were done then it is not likely that it could be misdiagnosed unfortunately

---