Issn Print: 1533-7006

Publication Date: 2005/10/01


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DISTORTED BODY IMAGE FOR PATIENTS WITH COMPLEX REGIONAL PAIN SYNDROME

Paula Moyer

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Excerpt

“Why does it hurt?” From a medical perspective, identifying the source of complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) – a disorder characterized by chronic severe pain in an arm or leg after injury; increased sensitivity to touch; and changes in the nails, bone, and skin – which seems disproportionate to any inciting sources, has been challenging. The pathophysiology of CRPS is poorly understood and not easily explained.
But investigators suggested in one new study in last month's Neurology that central processing of sensory input may be altered in CRPS.
In the study (Neurology 2005,65:773), lead author Lorimer Moseley, PhD, the Nuffield Medical Fellow in Human Anatomy and Genetics at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, reported that patients with CRPS perceived the affected limb as being larger than it is, much in the way that patients under regional anesthesia perceive the anesthetized portion of the body as enlarged or swollen.
Dr. Moseley, who conducted his research while a research fellow in Pain Sciences at the University of Sydney in Australia, noted that “regional anesthesia results in shrinkage of the primary sensory cortex (S1) representation of the area and the perception that the area is larger than is,” and theororized that “if reduced SI representation of the affected limb is involved in generating a perception that the limb is larger than it really is, then this effect should be present in patients with CRPS.
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