Sympathetic Pain

You have been referred to the Regional Pain Treatment Medical Center because your physician has suspected an abnormal function of your Sympathetic (Autonomic or Automatic) System, which may be causing pain out of proportion to the original injury.

Sympathetic Pain Syndrome is a very complicated disease. The terminology for sympathetic pain is Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), which includes Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, Causalgia, Sympathalgia, Sympathetically Mediated Pain, Sympathetically Independent Pain and others.

The RPTMC Pain physician will perform a comprehensive evaluation and diagnosis.

The pain patients experience may be increasingly severe. It affects people of all ages, and has physical, emotional, psychological ramifications. This pain may have been caused by mild to moderate trauma, such as a bump on the shin, small surgery or other relatively minor injury, or by direct trauma, to a major nerve such as a laceration. The initial injury heals but the pain progresses as time goes on causing increasingly severe disability secondary to pain. Symptoms include intolerance to any touch or pressure on the affected limb, swelling, redness, sweating, hair and skin changes, ulceration, coldness, color changes, osteoporosis. In advanced stages the limb can be useless. Depression can overwhelm a patients life due to the increasing pain syndrome.

Treatment needs to be early, aggressive and multidisciplinary to avoid lifelong complications!

The Regional Pain Treatment Center Doctor can help your doctor treat your sympathetic pain, by coordinating Medical treatment, Psychological Counseling and providing Diagnostic and Therapeutic Injections specific to your pain syndrome. These may include Sympathetic blocks, Epidural injections, Regional blocks, Intravenous Sympathetic blocks and Implanted Pump and Stimulator techniques. Specifics of Benefit versus Risk will be discussed with you. Our pain doctors are highly trained and experienced to assure the greatest safety.

Injection therapy works to interrupt and reset the abnormally functioning sympathetic system. Early aggressive treatment leads to the greatest success and prevents progression of the disease. In some cases pain is completely relieved after the first injection. Success varies with the duration and stage of the Sympathetic Pain.

The RPTMC will help in the management of this serious pain problem.