Facilities
Located at NYU Langone Medical Center, on the ninth floor of Skirball Tower, the Center is around 2000 square feet. Onsite medical facilities include a fully equipped examining room and blood work laboratory, an autonomic clinical research laboratory and an electrophysiology laboratory.
There are also four doctor’s offices, a waiting room and secretarial support station, a conference room and library, and a fellow’s room.
The laboratory specializes in qualitative and quantitative assessments of autonomic and sensory nerve function. Laboratory procedures include:
- tilt testing with continuous electrocardiographic and beat-to-beat blood pressure monitoring
- lower body negative pressure techniques
- analysis of heart rate variability using spectral techniques
- measurements of baroreflex function using neck collars
- direct recordings of post ganglionic sympathetic nerve activity using microneurography
- measurements of vascular resistance and cerebral blood flow using peripheral artery and transcranial Doppler probes
- sympathetic skin reflexes and quantitative sweat tests
- brainstem reflexes using electrophysiology techniques
- and sensory tests such as determination of warm and cold temperature thresholds, pain sensation, and vibration thresholds, histamine and Schirmer tear flow tests, among others.
A unique resource of the Dysautonomia Center is an extensive computer-based relational database with complete medical records of patients with neurodegenerative autonomic disorders particularly synucleinopathies (i.e., Parkinson’s disease, pure autonomic failure, multiple system atrophy and dementia with Lewy bodies) and orthostatic intolerance of other etiologies.
Also available is a comprehensive database containing complete medical records of patients with familial dysautonomia starting in 1970. This repository of information allows a unique analysis of the natural history of patients with FD.
These historical controls are good benchmarks to analyze the effects of prospective therapeutic interventions. One-third of the FD patients reside in the greater New York City area, one-third reside in Israel and the rest in other parts of the USA, as well as Canada, South America (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay), Europe (England, France, Germany), South Africa and Australia.
