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Lumbar sympathetic blockade in children with complex regional pain syndromes: a double blind placebo-controlled crossover trial.

This study performed by anesthesiologists at Harvard Medical School looks at lumbar sympathetic blockade in children with lower limb CRPS.

A lumbar sympathetic blockade involves placing a needle in the lower part of the back. It safely reaches the area near the spinal cord that sympathetic nerves supplying the lower limbs can be found. Overactivity of these nerves is thought to be a part of the reason why CRPS may occur.

After numbing these nerves with the anesthetic, the physicians found there was an improvement of the pain these patients experienced.

The physicians concluded that this provided some evidence that the sympathetic nerves do play a part in the CRPS picture.

This study does not have a large number of patients (of course there are not to many of us!). It is also very difficult to measure pain. Asking people their pain level is a good indication but is difficult to reproduce in a scientific study setting. Finally, this is a pretty involved procedure and the benefits of doing something like this must be balanced with the risk of doing it.

This procedure seemed to provide some pain relief for the patients in this particular setting. It also adds to our understanding of the what may be causing our pain in CRPS.

The article can be found at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19602962

Comment by:
Dr. K

Art Kaminski MD
www.crps.physiciansforpatients.com