• Anesthesiology · Oct 2019

    Observational Study

    Outcomes of Sympathetic Blocks in the Management of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

    • Jianguo Cheng, Vafi Salmasi, Jing You, Michael Grille, Dongsheng Yang, Edward J Mascha, Olivia T Cheng, Feng Zhao, and Richard W Rosenquist.
    • From the Departments of Pain Management (J.C., V.S., M.G., O.T.C., F.Z., R.W.R.) Neurosciences (J.C.) Quantitative Health Sciences and Outcomes Research (J.Y., D.Y., E.J.M.), Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California (V.S.).
    • Anesthesiology. 2019 Oct 1; 131 (4): 883-893.

    BackgroundSympathetic dysfunction may be present in complex regional pain syndrome, and sympathetic blocks are routinely performed in practice. To investigate the therapeutic and predictive values of sympathetic blocks, the authors test the hypotheses that sympathetic blocks provide analgesic effects that may be associated with the temperature differences between the two extremities before and after the blocks and that the effects of sympathetic blocks may predict the success (defined as achieving more than 50% pain reduction) of spinal cord stimulation trials.MethodsThe authors performed a retrospective study of 318 patients who underwent sympathetic blocks in a major academic center (2009 to 2016) to assess the association between pain reduction and preprocedure temperature difference between the involved and contralateral limbs. The primary outcome was pain improvement by more than 50%, and the secondary outcome was duration of more than 50% pain reduction per patient report. The authors assessed the association between pain reduction and the success rate of spinal cord stimulation trials.ResultsAmong the 318 patients, 255 were diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome and others with various sympathetically related disorders. Successful pain reduction (more than 50%) was observed in 155 patients with complex regional pain syndrome (155 of 255, 61%). The majority of patients (132 of 155, 85%) experienced more than 50% pain relief for 1 to 4 weeks or longer. The degree and duration of pain relief were not associated with preprocedure temperature parameters with estimated odds ratio of 1.03 (97.5% CI, 0.95-1.11) or 1.01 (97.5% CI, 0.96-1.06) for one degree decrease (P = 0.459 or 0.809). There was no difference in the success rate of spinal cord stimulation trials between patients with or without more than 50% pain relief after sympathetic blocks (35 of 40, 88% vs. 26 of 29, 90%, P > 0.990).ConclusionsThe authors conclude that sympathetic blocks may be therapeutic in patients with complex regional pain syndrome regardless of preprocedure limb temperatures. The effects of sympathetic blocks do not predict the success of spinal cord stimulation.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…