The United Nations has proclaimed 1981 the International Year of the Disabled, and thus the research and clinical advances in physical medicine and rehabilitation are appropriately highlighted. Diagnosis Single-fiber electromyography has emerged as a clinically useful technique to identify neuromuscular transmission defects at an earlier stage in myasthenia gravis and related diseases. It also has become helpful in the semiquantitative estimation of reinnervation after nerve regrowth and certain motor unit diseases. This technique involves the measurement of variations in latencies of transmission of clinically mediated nerve impulses across the myoneural junction within a given motor neuron. Somatosensory potentials recorded over the head and spinal cord have been useful procedures to evaluate afferent pathways in the CNS. These may have prognostic value early in the course of head and spinal cord injuries and are also being used to monitor the spinal cord in certain operations on the spinal column. Pain Management