Pain is our body's alarm system. It informs us that some things are not going right and makes us take precautions about it. I know, physically, none of us likes these pain at all and if we have pain it is a disaster for us. But, if we didn't have pain alarm system just know that most of us wouldn't even be alive. Our savior is the pain mechanism that we have.
In some cases, we can also have pain complaints even without any tissue damage. At least, this is the case in %1-2 of people. A healthy tissue but constant pain. Yes, I'm talking about neuropathic pain.
Neuropathic Pain
It is defined as; a disturbing feeling that occurs without any damaged tissue caused by the nerves themselves. The sudden and involuntary electrical discharges caused by the damaging of myelin sheaths of nerve cells causes neuropathic pains.
Let me try to explain the difference between traumas or tissue damages and neuropathic pain like this;
You have an abscess in your tooth and the inflammation causes tooth pain by putting pressure on the nevre. With the right drug usage, that is with non-steroid and anti-inflammatory drugs, when the abscess causing pain goes away, the pain will go away too.
Your tooth had to be pulled out, and because you did not get the treatment for a long time damage occurred in your tooth root nerve. You'd still feel pain for some time if your tooth had already been pulled. This is also a neuropathic pain.
Generally, the patient's complaints are; disturbing feelings like tingling, burning, stinging and electric shock.
The most common and most known of the neuropathic pain is diabetic neuropathy which is caused by diabetes and commonly seen in the foot.
Neuropathic pain is separated into 2 which are peripheral neuropathy and central neuropathy
Causes of peripheral neuropathy;
• Metabolical causes; diabetes, kidney diseases.
• Causes related to infections; AIDS, zoster.
• Causes related to inflammation; Gullianne Barre syndrome
• Inherited factors, nutritional deficiencies; lack of vitamin B, alcoholism, and some malignant cancer types.
Central Neuropathy
- Spine injuries and spine inflammation diseases.
- Neuropathic pain related to Multiple Sclerosis(MS)
- Neuropathic pain after stroke
Treatment:
Neuropathic pain can not be treated with painkillers or anti-inflammatory drugs. The general treatment approach is that the pain will decrease or will be eliminated by curing the disease that is thought to be causing the pain.
• For example; decreasing the blood glucose level of a diabetic patient to a normal level will also decrease the neuropathic pain. In this case, the excessive glucose in the blood that's causing the pain is damaging the myelin sheath of the nerve cells and discharges without control is causing neuropathic pain.
In peripheral neuropatic pain (diabetic neuropathy, etc.), when the effect causing the pain is eliminated, there will also be a recovery in neuropathic pain. But it's a harder process for central neuropatic pain.
While the treatment principles are the same because the ailments causing the pain has a chronic and hard clinic, the severity and frequency of neuropathic pain are more and unfortunately, the treatment is more troublesome and harder.
Pain in hemiplegic patients is the best example for this.
Today, neuropathic pain treatment is multifaceted. Treatments with and without drugs have started to be more effective. Physiotherapy, psychotherapy, ergotherapy treatment approaches are being used with success.
3D Augmented reality therapy
Parallel to the technological developments, today, the 3D augmented reality treatment has started to be used instead of the mirror therapy which was being used very commonly. It has been seen that it was more successful for acute pain rather than chronic pain.
3D augmented reality therapy is based on the main principles of mirror therapy.
3-dimensional augmented reality system(3DAGS) aims to raise ones immertion experience to the highest level. The system will turn the unharmed extremity of the patient that's able to move freely into a real-time 3-dimensional image. And reflect this image to the part where the damaged extremity is located.
The patient will see the harmed extremity in animation as it was moving when he/she moves their unharmed extremity.
The patients will receive visual feedback of the harmed extremity moving painlessly and normal when the unharmed extremity is moved and the visualization is reflected. Over time they will believe the visualization they see is real.
The information on this post is provided for educational and informational purposes only.
references;
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2768555/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1810425/
• https://www.ninds.nih.gov/
• https://www.medicinenet.com/
• http://www.tandfonline.com/