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Fantasies Fight Phantom Limb Pain
Treatment
Phantom sensation and the ensuing pain is chronic, highly subjective and is most certainly not relieved by the existing set of treatments. Surgery carried out to relieve patients of the pain are known to do more harm than good.
Research now seeks to detect new origins of pain. Based on this concept, the focus has shifted from the site of amputation to the brain and new methods of chronic pain treatment have taken shape.
Ramachandran and Rogers carried out a trial in 1996, wherein people with phantom limb pain were requested to place their arms inside a mirror box. They saw the amputated stump mirror-reversed. On moving the stump inside the box, the patients were visually tricked into thinking that they were moving their amputated limb. For reasons still not clear, phantom pain was considerably reduced in these patients. Although not consistent this result indicates that there could be a correlation between the phantom pain and theloss of motor control to the limb, as well as loss of sensory input from it.
Flor’s group of researchers has discovered that an electrical prosthetic limb, that operates by signals emanating from the patient’s muscle, is capable of reducing the pain when used for prolonged periods.
According to Giraux and Sirigu, teaching patients to imagine the movement of their (paralyzed) arm in co-ordination with a virtual arm, moving on a screen before them, can rid them of their phantom limb pain.
Playing golf with the missing arm in the realms of one’s imagination also worked wonders.
Acupuncture and Magnetic therapy have also been used to treat chronic phantom limb pain. The nature of this chronic pain condition also demands that these patients undergo anxiety treatment which is often done by administering anti depressants.
All of the above treatment modes have, collectively, made the life of amputees a lot more bearable than what it was a few years ago.
Let us hope that in future, a better understanding of the mysteries of the human brain, and its role in pain, will help to usher in novel treatments for the sufferers.
Source-Medindia
Dr. REEJA THARU/L
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