{"id":2946,"date":"2010-08-16T00:30:18","date_gmt":"2010-08-16T04:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/?p=2946"},"modified":"2016-11-15T19:26:57","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T23:26:57","slug":"prevention-of-phantom-limb-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/2946\/prevention-of-phantom-limb-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Phantom Limb Pain Be <i>Prevented<\/i>?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Up to 72% of people undergoing an amputation develop phantom limb pain (PLP). This type of pain is quite\u00a0difficult to treat with medications or injections. However we do know that <strong>mirror therapy <\/strong>achieves excellent results in reducing or eliminating this pain.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/mirror-therapy-for-leg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2947\" title=\"mirror therapy for leg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/mirror-therapy-for-leg.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"265\" height=\"201\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But how about <em>preventing <\/em>phantom pain?<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Steven Hanling and others at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego had patients use mirror therapy <em>prior to <\/em>amputation in a small group of 4 men. The patients were young, active duty men, 3 having trauma due to explosions (IED&#8217;s) and 1 suffering a fall. They had experienced pain for 4-17 months prior to amputation. The patients\u00a0used mirror therapy for 2 weeks prior to amputation. In mirror therapy, the painful body part, let&#8217;s say a hand,\u00a0is put behind a mirror. The mirror is arranged so that it looks to the patient like he has 2 normal hands. While watching the reflected &#8220;good&#8221; hand in the mirror, the patient would do movements of either only the good hand or both hands.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s thought that by watching normal movement, the brain learns everything&#8217;s ok. In other words, the visual system is used to re-train the brain that movement is fine to do. Then,\u00a0pain signals decrease.<\/p>\n<p>In the study described above, 1 patient experienced no limb pain or phantom limb pain, 2 patients has mild limb pain and mild PLP, and the 4th patient had moderate limb pain with brief, moderate episodes of PLP. These are significant results and should\u00a0encourage more studies of\u00a0mirror therapy prior to amputation.<\/p>\n<p>The study is: &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.anesthesia-analgesia.org\/content\/110\/2\/611.full.pdf+html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Preamputation Mirror Therapy May Prevent Development of Phantom Limb Pain: A Case Series<\/a>,&#8221; in Anesthesia and Analgesia, Vol 110, February 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Up to 72% of people undergoing an amputation develop phantom limb pain (PLP). This type of pain is quite\u00a0difficult to treat with medications or injections. However we do know that mirror therapy achieves excellent results in reducing or eliminating this pain. But how about preventing phantom pain? Dr. Steven Hanling and others at the Naval [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2946"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7700,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions\/7700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}