CRPS

After going through the procedure of knee replacement surgery it can be devastating to find that the pain in the knee has persisted. This paper discusses the possible reasons why this might occur.

There are a number of problems which which are the commoner causes of persistent pain after a knee replacement -

These sites offer an authoritative overview of CRPS -

1. RSD Arena

2. American RSD Hope

3. International Research Foundation for RSD/CRPS

4. Neurological Associates Pain Management Centre

5. RSD Alert

The key with managing CRPS is to catch the problem early (in Stage I) and treat it appropriately.

If the situation in Stage I does not resolve and the clinician fails to appreciate the situation, a tug of will often follows between the physiotherapist pushing the patient to 'try harder' and the patient clinging to their crutches, becoming more and more distressed with the unremitting discomfort. The patient may be accused of 'putting it on' for the sake of getting stronger addictive painkillers.

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) seems to be unrelated to the extent or seriousness of the original insult to the knee. Often the original problem is, in the grand scheme of things, relatively trivial.

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) was previously known as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD) and before that it was called 'Causalgia', 'Algodystrophy' or 'Sudeck's atrophy'.

There definitely seems to be a particular type of person who gets CRPS (RSD). Classically the person is aged 40-60, but  on the KNEEguru bulletin board we seem to have frequently had CRPS patients who are -