Many upper limb amputees experience an incessant, post-amputation "phantom limb pain" and report that their missing limbs feel paralyzed in an uncomfortable posture. One hypothesis is that efferent commands no longer generate expected afferent signals, such as proprioceptive feedback from changes in limb configuration, and that the mismatch of motor commands and visual feedback is interpreted a...

Previous work showed the existence of changes in the topographic organization within the somatosensory cortex (SI) in amputees with phantom limb pain, however, the link between nonpainful phantom sensations such as cramping or tingling or the percept of the limb and cortical changes is less clear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a highly selective group of limb amputees ...

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. pISSN 1011-8934 eISSN 1598-6357 http://dx.doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2011.26.9.1250 • J Korean Med...

A. Failed back surgery syndrome with low back pain and significant radicular pain; or B. Complex regional pain syndrome (also known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy); or C. Inoperable chronic ischemic limb pain secondary to peripheral vascular disease; or D. Last resort treatment of moderate to severe (5 or more on a 10-point VAS scale) chronic neuropathic pain of certain origins (i.e., lumbosac...

Historically, phantom limb pain (PLP) develops in 50-80% of amputees and may arise within days following an amputation for reasons presently not well understood. Our case involves a 29-year-old male with previous surgical amputation who develops PLP after the performance of a femoral nerve block. Although there have been documented cases of reactivation of PLP in amputees after neuraxial techni...