Although curable, leprosy is still a major public health problem. This is a chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae and characterized by dermatological and neurological involvement. If not treated, this disease can lead to serious disability. The evaluation of the neurological function of the patient is very important for the early dignosis and treatment of nerves damage. The exams in neurological evaluation of leprosy are too subjective. This study, worrying about the consistency of neurological evaluation in showing in a reliable manner the situation of patients, aims to correlate the clinical complaints from leprosy patients with sensory and motor findings in upper and lower limbs. For this, an analytical cross-sectional study was conducted in two steps. The first stage included 97 leprosy patients treated at the service between the years 2014 and 2015, in them was applied the simplified neurological evaluation, which was made the examination of nerve palpation, voluntary muscle strength test, tactile sensitivity test at hand and feet with Semmes-Weinstein, in addition to the collection of clinical complaints. For the second stage were randomly selected 14 patients who were submitted to surface sensitivity tests (thermal, painful and tactile) in the path of the most commonly affected nerves. Data analysis was performed using the chi-square test, G test and t test, when relevant to the comparison with the population or between groups. For correlation ordinal variables the Spearman correlation test, considering the alpha significance level of 0.05. Of the 97 leprosy patients, 77 (79.4%) had complaints, the most common being those related to sensory fibers, including pain and numbness were the most mentioned. On palpation, the ulnar nerve and tibial were the most affected and multibacillary patients had higher averages of affected nerves and most sensitive damage. Engine damage was not very common among patients, but low levels of muscle strength found were related to higher sensory damage stages, higher degree of disability and greater amount of affected nerve. When compared to the occurrence of complaint, the complainants patients had more advanced stages of sensory damage, higher degree of disability in the lower limbs and motor damage occurring more frequently, but the type of complaint did not influence these results. In the evaluation of the surface sensitivity in the nerve pathway, there was a higher incidence of sensory changes also among the plaintiffs, and the heat the most affected. It is clear, then, that the complainants patients are more sensitive to sensory and motor damage, the high degree of disability, and the sensitivity of changes in nerve path. Therefore, health professionals should be alert to this patient group, allocating more attention at the time of evaluation in order to avoid the dreaded disabilities.
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