• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.85-88
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• 1992

Buerger's disease is a chronic occlusive arterial disease in which a non-arteriosclerotic lesion involves medium-sized arteries, veins, and nerves of the distal leg or arm. Sympathetic interruption is indicated to improve blood flow to the involved extremity, although sympathetic blockade can provide temporally relief of vasospasm and pain. Chemical or surgical sympathectomy has been performed for this purpose and intravenous regional sympathetic block(IRSB) is an alternative. Guanethidine or reserpine has been administered for IRSB. Intraarterial or intravenous systemic administration of prostaglandin E1(PGE1) has been recommended for the treatment of Buerger's disease. We used PGE1 for intravenous regional administration as an IRSB with results as good as that of intraarterial injection. The advantages of the method include that it is less expensive than systemic administration, less invasive than intra-arterial injection, and simple in technical application.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.223-227
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• 2006

Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is clinically characterized by pain, abnormal regulation of blood flow and sweating, edema of skin and subcutaneous tissues, sensory and motor disturbances, and trophic changes of the skin. A 21-year-old man was suffering from pain and swelling in his right hand and forearm. His arm had been in splints for 3 weeks following an extension injury of the right fingers and wrist, with the pain having developed 2 weeks after the splinting. He was treated with various nerve blocks including continuous epidural infusion, thoracic sympathetic block and peripheral nerve blocks, and squeezing his edematous region under general anesthesia as well as intravenous lidocaine and ketamine infusions. However, all of the performed treatments had no effect on the patient's pain or hand swelling. As a next line therapy, spinal cord stimulation should be considered because of intractable severe pain and swelling to almost all other modalities of therapy. We therefore performed an early intervention of spinal cord stimulation for the patient with refractory CRPS type I 5 months after the onset of pain and have got an excellent result.