Complex Regional Pain Syndrome or CRPS, formally known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy or RSD, is a chronic condition that causes persistent burning pain and swelling in your arms, hands, legs or feet. It’s a neuro-inflammatory disorder classified as rare by the US food and drug administration. Your body’s normal response to an injury begins when pain receptors deliver pain massages in the form of nerves impulses to your brain. Once theses impulses reach the pain centers in your brain, the pain center generate new impulses and send them through your sympathetic nervous system to the area of injure. The sympathetic impulses trigger an inflammatory response causing blood vessels to expand. The inflammatory response also leads to swelling and redness in the damaged tissues as your wounds heals the selling and redness subside and the pain goes away. However, if you have complex regional pain syndrome the pain and swelling do not go away after your wound heal and may worsen over time.
Although the exact causes are unknown, there have been theories:
There are two types of complex regional pain syndrome. Both have common characteristics but also differences.
If you have CRPS Type 1, your condition may have been triggered by an illness or injury, but you do not have a nerve injury in the affected area.
If you have CRPS Type 2, your condition is clearly linked to a nerve injury in the affected area. The difference between the two is that one occurs after an illness or injury to a limb where said injury doesn’t affect any nerves, where in the other the injury affects the nerves of that limb.
Treatment of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome is focused on pain management as there is no cure for this condition, your treatment options may include pain medication, physical therapy, nerve block, implantation of a pain controlling device, surgery and psychosocial support.
The CRPS is an extremely debilitating syndrome. The best way to avoid this is to avoid serious injury, but serious injuries can happen regardless of how careful a person is.
If you are experiencing pain from Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, contact Pegasus pain management, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, immediately to see what kind of pain treatment is best for you. To contact Pegasus pain management call (214) 702-5855