Complex regional pain syndrome

What is com­plex region­al pain syn­drome? Pro­fes­sor Karen Rod­ham explains this poor­ly-under­stood con­di­tion and pro­vides infor­ma­tion on the caus­es, diag­noses and treat­ment and self-man­age­ment options avail­able to peo­ple liv­ing with it.

If you would like to know more about the sources of evi­dence con­sult­ed for this pub­li­ca­tion here.

More Infor­ma­tion on CRPS

Web­sites

• Burn­ing Nights: a UK char­i­ty that rais­es aware­ness of CRPS: www.burningnightscrps.org/
• CRPS UK: a patient led char­i­ty, rais­ing aware­ness and sup­port­ing peo­ple with CRPS through expe­ri­ence, under­stand­ing and edu­ca­tion: www.crps-uk.org/
• CRPS Net­work UK: a research net­work made up of a num­ber of UK NHS trusts and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions with an inter­est in CRPS. One of its main aims is to raise aware­ness and under­stand­ing of CRPS among health pro­fes­sion­als, patients and the gen­er­al pub­lic: www.crpsnetworkuk.org/
• Relate: an organ­i­sa­tion which aims to help cou­ples to find a way through any dif­fi­cul­ties they may be fac­ing in their rela­tion­ship: www.relate.org.uk/relationship-help/help-relationships/relationshipcounselling.

Books and leaflets

• Arthri­tis Research UK: an organ­i­sa­tion which aims to improve the qual­i­ty of life of peo­ple with arthri­tis. They have pro­duced a leaflet about CRPS: www.arthritisresearchuk.org/arthritisinformation/conditions/complexregional-pain-syndrome.aspx
• Hydrother­a­py leaflet: www.arthritisresearchuk.org/arthritisinformation/therapies/hydrotherapy.aspx
• Man­age your pain, by Liz Macleod and Paul Cameron. A book­let pub­lished by Pain Concern
• Sleep­ing with Pain: Strate­gies for a rest­ful night from a pain-man­age­ment expert by Sue Pea­cock (2016)
• Learn­ing to cope with CRPS/RSD: Putting life first and pain sec­ond by Karen Rod­ham (2015)
• Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians CRPS guide­lines: www.rcplondon.ac.uk/guidelinespolicy/complex-regional-painsyndrome-adults.

Pod­casts

• An award from the RS Mac­Don­ald Char­i­ta­ble Trust allowed us to pro­duce this leaflet and two radio pro­grammes on CRPS, Air­ing Pain pro­gramme 94 and Air­ing Pain pro­gramme 95.

Karen Rod­ham is Pro­fes­sor of Health Psy­chol­o­gy at the Stafford­shire Cen­tre for Psy­cho­log­i­cal Research. She designed and then led the Com­plex Region­al Pain Syn­drome psy­chol­o­gy ser­vice for adults at the Roy­al Nation­al Hos­pi­tal for Rheumat­ic Dis­eases for six years.