Phantom limb syndrome: the care there!
Written on 10/8/10 by Cathe in Acupuncture , Articles , Physical Medicine , Chinese medicine |
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Phantom limb syndrome is the physical perception, often annoying and painful, a segment of the body n the following amputation of the same.
For many years in the West, patients with the disease, especially veterans, were considered visionary and treated with massive doses of antidepressants and antipsychotics.
The sum was sad but true: a change in reality the same personality disorder.
Are due to take years, and polished and detailed descriptions by the unfortunate patients, the first to admit that a scientific basis for this disorder could exist.
That's what today is explained by the presence in the brain of a scheme to represent the whole body that does not change after the amputation occurred.
It 's like the cut nerves were going haywire and continue to send information on the uphill segment amputee. More often than not it is just the feeling that he still has the segment, but of extreme feelings (which are described as neurology dysesthesia) and which are usually the result of a neuralgia or nerve inflammation affected.
Itching, cold, heat, fingers crossed, pain, are usually unpleasant feelings but also not giving respite. In a sense it is as if the brain was overwhelmed and flooded with false information in this entry. There is no drug to relieve the disorder in a permanent and satisfactory. It would be better to say that unfortunately a lot of the drugs used in this field in a completely experimental. Cannabis is among the substances most commonly used, although in many cases the dependence and the dose will inevitably increase over time.
Again all the doctors are trying, though aware of the secondary damage of many drug substances, and yet no one thinks of the possible use of acupuncture. I went searching on Pubmed and are in fact few and not very significant scientific work proposed for the use of acupuncture in the phantom limb (as for many other disorders, for that matter).
I myself, until a few months ago, I never got to treat any patient with this disease. HOWEVER, when a patient asked me if he could operate telephone, impulsively and without doubt I replied in the affirmative. These years of work with only the acupuncture helped me to perceive, even if sometimes in a very instinctive, the therapeutic possibilities of this ancient discipline.
The pain in general, and specifically on nerve pain, the application of acupuncture is a powerful and effective antalgica, why should not even phantom limb? Socket enthusiasm, I immediately phoned my teacher, Dr. Picozzi, which deals with acupuncture for over 20 years and is perhaps the highest acupuncturist with Italian series of patients treated. He also told me that he has never treated patients and amputees who remembered only the case of a patient, early in his career, which, moreover, had undergone a few treatments.
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Tags: Acupuncture , phantom limb , phantom limb syndrome
