Complex regional pain syndrome is a rare condition that causesdebilitating pain and loss of mobility to one or more extremities. While multiple tools have been developed to diagnose this disease, the treatments currently employed are highly variable and the results are unpredictable. In order to address this, we did a review of the literature and created a standardized six week complex regional pain syndrome treatment protocol which included many treatments with proven benefit employed simultaneously. In this article, we present our brief literature review, our standardized protocol, and three case reports of patients who had successful treatment of their disease with our newly established protocol. We also present a discussion detailing why we feel that this protocol has provided benefits in these first three cases.

Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a rare but debilitating disease with an incidence of approximately 26 cases per 100,000 person years in a population study from the Netherlands. Although the underlying pathophysiology remains incompletely understood, the hallmark of the disease is regional pain with multisystem involvement presenting with symptoms of swelling, vasomotor changes, loss of mobility, and trophic changes. While the International Association for the Study of Pain developed the Budapest Criteria in 2003 to further standardize the diagnosis of CRPS, there has been little standardization of treatment of this disease. Physical and occupational therapy (PT/OT) have been shown to provide benefit, but prolonged patient participation can be challenging due to severity of symptoms and lack of motivation.

Current Issue: Volume 2: Issue 2

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Elisha Marie,
Editorial Manager,
Anesthesiology Case Reports