Acute axonal polyneuropathy in an unventilated patient with sepsis.

Critical Illness Polyneuropathy (CIP) represents an acute axonal neuropathy that develops during treatment of severely ill patients and remits spontaneously once the critical condition is under control. Except for differences in the predisposing causes, it is difficult to distinguish CIP from axonal Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) on purely clinical grounds. We describe a 70 years lady who developed acute axonal polyneuropathy two weeks following snakebite. She developed this in the background of sepsis but never required ventilatory support. The difficulties in differentiating CIP from axonal GBS are discussed. The hypothesized overlap between both these syndromes is also reviewed.