• Pain Pract · Sep 2008

    Residual limbs of amputees are significantly cooler than contralateral intact limbs.

    • R Norman Harden, Christine M Gagnon, Michael Gallizzi, Anjum S Khan, and Devon Newman.
    • The Center for Pain Studies, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA. nharden@ric.org
    • Pain Pract. 2008 Sep 1; 8 (5): 342-7.

    ObjectiveTo test the hypothesis that distal residual limbs (DRLs) have significant vasomotor abnormalities.DesignComparative surface temperature studies of DRLs using paired samples (DRL vs. similar site on intact contralateral limb).Subjects/PatientsThirty-six volunteer subjects with unilateral, upper or lower limb amputations were recruited and evaluated at a pain research center in an urban academic rehabilitation facility.MethodsOur main outcomes were subjects' residual limb temperature as measured by quantitative infrared telethermography (qIRT), temperature strips, and examiner's palpation, compared with the contralateral limb.ResultsThe qIRT showed that the DRLs were significantly cooler than the corresponding area of the contralateral intact limbs (P < 0.01). The difference using temperature strips supported this finding (P < 0.05); while on physical examination, 39% of the residual limbs were perceived by the examiner as cooler than the corresponding unaffected limbs.ConclusionsDRLs as measured by qIRT were significantly cooler than the corresponding area of the contralateral intact limbs. A better understanding of these findings may be important in elucidating the pathophysiology of relevant clinical features such as a potential sympathetic component of postamputation pain.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…