Extraterritorial temperature pain threshold abnormalities in subjects with healed thermal injury.

Approximately 1.25 million individuals sustain burn injuries annually in the United States. Pain is frequent in patients with burn injuries and is often refractory to pharmacotherapy. We report quantitative sensory data from five subjects who sustained external thermal injuries to their limb(s) 8 weeks to 11 years previously, demonstrating reduced thermal pain thresholds in regions outside the burn injury zone, including contralateral limbs. Warm and cold detection thresholds were not significantly different from controls. These results complement data from animal models that demonstrate that allodynia can develop contralateral to a focal burn injury as a result of changes within the spinal cord and suggest that systemic or central mechanisms contribute to pain after burn injury.