Airing Pain 94: Complex Regional Pain Syndrome 1 of 2

Experts and suf­fer­ers dis­cuss the caus­es and poten­tial man­age­ment of CRPS and if it can help us bet­ter under­stand how our bod­ies react to stim­uli

This pro­gramme was fund­ed by grants from the RS Mac­Don­ald Char­i­ta­ble Trust and The Hos­pi­tal Sat­ur­day Fund.

The first of two pro­grammes on com­plex region­al pain syn­drome, or CRPS, which can be described as con­tin­u­ous and some­times debil­i­tat­ing pain that can be con­fined to one limb, but has been known to spread to oth­er parts of the body. CRPS is poor­ly under­stood, and no direct cause has been iden­ti­fied.[1]

In this edi­tion of Air­ing Pain, Paul Evans speaks to Sun­ny Boshoff, author of CRPS Aware­ness: Mov­ing Against Pain, who has had her own expe­ri­ences with the syn­drome, describ­ing the ago­nis­ing sen­sa­tions she felt while liv­ing with CRPS.

Pro­fes­sor Frank Birklein, head of the Periph­er­al Nerve Dis­or­ders and Pain Research and Treat­ment at the Depart­ment of Neu­rol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­tre Mainz in Ger­many is one of the world’s lead­ing author­i­ties on CRPS. He explains the mean­ing behind the syndrome’s name, what can cause it, and how under­stand­ing of the dis­ease has progressed.

Clin­i­cal lead for the com­plex region­al pain syn­drome ser­vice at the Roy­al Unit­ed Hos­pi­tals in Bath, Pro­fes­sor Can­dy McCabe, speaks about her expe­ri­ences of treat­ing peo­ple suf­fer­ing from the dis­ease, how it effects their emo­tion­al well­be­ing, and the psy­cho­log­i­cal ther­a­pies used to help peo­ple man­age their pain.

Issues cov­ered in this pro­gramme include: CRPS: com­plex region­al pain syn­drome, chron­ic pri­ma­ry pain, inflam­ma­tion, mir­ror ther­a­py, visu­al feed­back, mis­con­cep­tions, numb­ness, nutri­tion, occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py, the Per­fet­ti tech­nique, post-sur­gi­cal pain, psy­chol­o­gy, relax­ation, Rheumat­ic Dis­ease, swelling and visualisation.

Con­trib­u­tors:

• Sun­ny Boshoff, author of CRPS Aware­ness: Mov­ing Against Pain
• Dr Frank Birklein, Head of Periph­er­al Nerve Dis­or­ders and Pain Research and Treat­ment at the Depart­ment of Neu­rol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­tre Mainz
• Pro­fes­sor Can­dy McCabe, Clin­i­cal Lead for the CRPS ser­vice at the Roy­al Hos­pi­tals in Bath and the Flo­rence Nightin­gale Foun­da­tion Chair in Clin­i­cal Nurs­ing Prac­tise Research at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West Eng­land Bristol.

More infor­ma­tion:

• NHS Choic­es CRPS nhs.uk/Conditions/Complex-Regional-Pain-Syndrome/Pages/Introduction.aspx
• CRPS UK, a patient led organ­i­sa­tion for peo­ple with CRPS crps-uk.org/
• Burn­ing Nights, increas­ing aware­ness of CRPS in the UK and world­wide: burningnightscrps.org/.

[1] From CRPS UK crps-uk.org/what-is-crps/.