Painful phantom
Amputated limb pain sensation - a rather frequent guest Amputator. Some of them feel weak painful effects, and very rarely, others suffer from recurrent pain (up to 2 times a week), and the remaining exposed daily strong painful attacks. Character described pain patients is three kinds: "cramps" (binds, stistikivayuschaya that reduces), "kauzalgicheskaya" (pain-burning), the prevalence of "neuralgic" pain (like discharge current).
Huge numbers of people with amputated brush complain that if they brush regularly phantom compressed in a fist and fingers severely cut into his hand, they say, because of this they feel fatigue in the hand. ScientistsHenderson and Smith in 1948 identified some factors that trigger phantom pain is defecating and urinating. byvisceral impulses. Later it became known that any emotional experience can also be a provocateur phantom pain.
Painless phantom
Patient Amputator continues to feel the missing limb, describing its shape and position in space. Pain do not disturb them. Instead, they suffer from the fact that continue to think and act as if they have the mostamputation. Well, for example, trying to get out of bed on their phantom limb, trying to take the missing mugbrush, etc. Shape and position of the phantom limb is constantly changing, sometimes patients feel as if theiramputated hand has ornate shape and rushes up.
Properties of phantom pain
Phantom limb pain are four main features:
- Continued pain after healing of damaged tissue. For example, a patient whose leg was amputated because ofgangrene, may feel pain in the missing limb are exactly the same as they were with gangrene. Still, the patient may feel pain in nonexistent hand, which he lost because of ulcers, such as those that have been before itssurgical removal.
- Violent pains begin to attack the phantom limb in contact with anything.
- Phantom pain as well as the other quenches anesthetics.
- Fight fire, as they say. Phantom pain relief can be achieved by injection of hypertonic saline into the next limb,provoking a strong, short-term pain (lasts about 10 minutes). As a result, the pain disappears with phantom.
Pathogenesis of phantom pain
Doctors still have not established the true mechanisms underlying phantom pain. In the entire history of medicine was only 2 attempts to surgical removal of the effect of "phantom" limbs, and they both failed. Initiallytried to remove the nerve arises at the transected nerve stump in the field, which interferes with normal tissue regeneration: avail. The second method - amputation of the spinal cord: the same patient did not feelimprovement, but on the contrary, it only got worse.
Treatment of phantom limb pain
Today there are three main methods of treatment effect "phantom" limb:
* Electroneurostimulation (through the skin).
* Stimulation of the posterior columns of the spinal cord
* Vibratory stump
Phantom pain syndrome patients undergoing treatment in Germany, feel improvements already in the first weekof treatment. All the matter is that German doctors operate under the new technology to get rid of phantom limb pain developed recently.
