Management Strategies for Spinal Cord Injury Pain Updated for the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) often results in several life-altering impairments, including paralysis, sensory loss, and neurogenic bowel/bladder dysfunction. Some of these SCI-related conditions can be accommodated with compensatory strategies. Perhaps no SCI-associated condition is more troublesome and recalcitrant to the treating physiatrist than chronic neuropathic pain. In addition to the expected challenges in treating any chronic pain condition, treatment of SCI-related pain has the added difficulty of disruption of normal neural pathways that subserve pain transmission and attenuation. This article reviews selected treatment strategies for SCI-associated neuropathic pain.

Keywords: Chronic pain; Neuropathic pain; Spinal cord injury; Traumatic myelopathy.