Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

What is CRPS?  Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, formerly known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy, or RSD, is disease of the Sympathetic Nervous System.  It is characterized by severe, chronic, high-intensity neuropathic pain that affects a limb, usually after an injury or sometimes surgery.  The associated pain from the injury is more severe and longer lasting than would be expected, and is most often described as burning, stabbing, or stinging.  

As a result of the initial injury, the nervous system malfunctions and the nerves send constant and erroneous pain to signals to the brain. The McGill Pain Index, a scale rating of pain developed by McGill University, rates CRPS at the top of the scale ahead of child birth and amputation.  

CRPS is uncommon enough that many health professionals, while they may have heard the term, are not familiar with the disease.  Its cause is not clearly understood.  Symptoms include a continuous burning pain, swelling, bruising and discoloration, hypersensitivity to tactile stimuli known as allodynia, and muscle spasms.  Treatments vary from drug therapies such as ketamine, a dissociative anesthesia, and opioids to sympathetic nerve blocks (injections near the spine), spinal stimulators implanted via surgery, electrical stimulation, and physical therapy, all in an attempt to control the pain.

CRPS can also spread from the initial limb that was affected to other parts of the body.  Gastrointestinal issues associated with CRPS are common.  For reasons not understood, the disease is more common in women, typically under the age of 40.  However, anyone is susceptible.