Frequency of Phantom Pain among patients with Spinal Cord Injury

Summary: Background: Patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) usually have permanent and often devastating neurologic deficits and disability and pain (1). According to the National Institutes of Health, "among neurological disorders, the cost to society of automotive SCI is exceeded only by the cost of mental retardation"(2). Neurogenic pain constitutes one of the enigmatic clinical syndromes faced by patients, clinicians, and researchers (3). Materials and Methods: Current observational descriptive cross-sectional survey is performed among 270 patients with spinal cord injuries including veterans and non-veteran disabled subjects in Tehran-City during 2005. Results: Mean age of the subjects was 37.8±12.2 years. 26.3% were female and 73.7% were male. 17.4% had spinal cord injury in cervical level, 41.5% thoracic, 38.1% lumbar, and 3% Quada Equina level. 76.3% had complete and 23.7% incomplete injuries. 19.3% had injury duration of less than 5 years, 11.9% between 5 to 10 years, and 68.9% upper than 10 years. Phantom pain below the lesion level was present in 89 patients (33%) that included 26% of veterans and 37% of non-veterans. There was a statistically significant association between age, marital status, and injury duration with having phantom pain (P< 0.05). Conclusion: it is concluded that frequency of phantom pain in current study is less than all of previous studies and our patients were totally resistant to analgesic treatments which may be due to physiopathologic basis of such pains in comparison with other pains due to spinal cord injuries.