Active clinical trials for "Complex Regional Pain Syndromes"

40 CRPS patients will be recruited over a three-year period (target of 160 patients at all sites). Assessment of exclusion criteria will be undertaken during initial recruitment. Exclusion criteria are: <18 years; a second chronic pain syndrome that would interfere with pain rating; psychiatric comorbidity; pain in both hands or feet; pregnancy or breastfeeding; sympathectomy in the affected limb; use of topical medication; known sensitivity to alpha 1- adrenoceptor agonists or other contraindications. Patients will maintain their regular oral medications throughout the study period. Assessment of sympathetically maintained pain (SMP) will require an intradermal dose of Phenylephrine to rekindle SMP and mechanical hyperalgesia. Clonidine will be used to control for affects of algometer fiction and may inhibit SMP by inhibiting the release of more norepinephrine from sympathetic nerve terminals. Skin biopsies will be obtained under sterile conditions from a site of mechanical or thermal hyperalgesia using a 3mm diameter skin biopsy punch under local anesthesia. Samples from a mirror image site on the contralateral body side will also be taken.

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is one of the most commonly undertaken neuromodulatory surgery techniques in the treatment of neuropathic pain. The indication for SCS is an ineffective conservative treatment of chronic pain syndromes. The effectiveness of SCS in the case of neuropathic pain is high. The positive result of SCS treatment is the reduction of previous painful symptoms by min. 50% and / or a reduction in the amount of taken analgesics and an improvement in the quality of life including sleep quality. Long-term studies estimate that in a properly selected group of patients more than 50% of patients achieve pain reduction by the required 50% and about 60% - 70% have an improvement in the quality of life and a reduction of pain. The efficacy of SCS in different modes of stimulation is evaluated. Patients receive four different types of stimulation for 2-week period - not knowing what kind of stimulation it is. It is said that in one type of stimulation they would feel parestesias and in other three they would not. Patients are not informed that beside tonic, burst and high frequency stimulation, the fourth is an off stimulation to check for placebo effect. The test is double-blinded

SPECIFIC AIMS Pain in both youth and adults is a complex, subjective and personal experience, and remains poorly understood. One particularly perplexing dimension of some forms of pain is the tendency of pain to spread outside of an affected body site to adjacent location, and then to unaffected body sites. Such widespread pain may reflect an altered spatial tuning of somatosensory processing, such that lateral inhibition is diminished, thereby allowing pain to spread. To date, no therapies exist which are designed specifically to diminish or even reverse the spatial spread of pain. However, training in two-point discrimination holds the potential to retune spatial aspects of somatosensory processing and may represent a novel therapy for widespread pain. Thus, the present investigation will test the following aims: Aim 1. Do youth with chronic pain have disrupted spatial tuning of somatosensory processing? Deficits in two point tactile discrimination have long been noted in adults with chronic pain, but such deficits remain poorly documented in pediatric chronic pain patients. In order to determine if such deficits exist, youth with both chronic pain and healthy youth will undergo assessment of two point discrimination thresholds. Aim 2. Does two-point discrimination training result in diminished pain and disability in youth with somatic pain? After initial characterization of tactile discrimination thresholds, youth with chronic pain will participate in multiple sessions of either two-point discrimination training or a single-point spatially-directed attentional control condition. Training will involve up to 9 additional sessions. Efficacy of training will be assessed by 1) reductions in the spatial extent of pain, 2) reductions in pain intensity and unpleasantness, and 3) reductions in pain-related disability.

Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a disease provoking chronic pain in the limbs, following a trauma. Patient care is complicated by the variable clinical picture and response to treatment. The stress level of the organization, for chronic pain impacts the regulation of the autonomic balance. The study of time and frequency domain analysis of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) allows non-invasive and reproducible assessment of the autonomic balance.

The purpose of this study is to investigated and evaluated the effectiveness of a new surgical technique for the treatment of severe chronic pain stages (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Type II).

The study would like show that patients who follow a protocol with GMI are less probability to develop CRPS

The purpose of this study is to characterize the pain coverage capability of the RESTORE spinal cord stimulation (SCS) and assess health outcomes.

A French University team (M. Jeanne, MD, and M. LOGIER, Ph D) have developed a pain assessment tool based on the analysis of the variability heart rate which evaluates the Analgesia Nociception Index (ANI). This index is intended to give a quantification of pain. The aim of the present study is to assess the validity of the ANI parameter in patients with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome treated with a nerve block (reversible pain).

Medical functional imagery seems to demonstrate that patients suffering from complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) have cortical modifications that alter their motor (or mental) imagery capacities. Nowadays, the use of motor imagery exercises are used in conventional rehabilitation treatments. But, in clinical practice, no study has verified if patients with CRPS desmonstrate problems in their motor imagery capacities. The MIQ-RS (Motor Imagery Questionnaire - Revised Second) is a valid, reliable and translated into French questionnaire to measure patients' capacities to do mental imagery. In this study, we compare 3 groups of 50 patients : healthy patients, patients with CRPS and patients with musculoskeletal disorder without CRPS. Every patient will take the MIQ-RS for the right and left body side. We hypothesis that patients with CRPS have more deficit than the 2 others to realise motor imagery.

The purpose of this study is to investigate, in two phases: (1) the feasibility and safety of Virtual Embodiment Therapy in treating chronic pain of lower back and upper limbs and (2) the efficacy of Virtual Embodiment Therapy on chronic pain disorders of the lower back and upper limbs. In phase 1, we will investigate the feasibility, safety, and side effects related to this treatment by assessing simulator sickness. In phase 2, which in contingent on successful completion of phase 1, we will assess symptoms of pain specific to the region treated, fear and avoidance behavior, and depression symptoms before and after 8 sessions of treatment with Virtual Embodiment Therapy in order to assess efficacy. This study will be single-blinded, because the participation of the clinician is necessary to ensure proper administration of the therapy, as well as to monitor in the event of adverse reactions.