Psychological Intervention and Physiotherapy With Medication Improves CRPS Patients Outcome

Helsinki University Central Hospital10 enrolled

Overview

A ten week open label study intervention to evaluate the outcome for a psychological intervention combined with physiotherapy and medication with memantine-morphine in 10 CRPS patients.

Ten CRPS I patients attended an intervention for 10 weeks. First, the medication was started with morphine 10mg adding gradually to 30 mg per day. Then, in addition to morphine, memantine 5 mg was started adding the dose gradually up to 40 mg per day if tolerated. Physiotherapy and psychological intervention were mostly carried out in a weekly group gathering with home exercises that were recorded to a diary. Psychological and physiotherapy interventions lasted for eight weeks. A neurological examination was done before and after the intervention as well as a separate physiotherapist examination of the hands. Patients filled out questionnaires of mood, quality of life, pain, and CRPS descriptions before and after the intervention.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

Conditions

CRPS

Interventions

Morphine, memantineDRUG

Morphine up to 30 mg per day orally and memantine up to 40 mg per day orally if tolerated for 10 weeks.

Psychological interventionBEHAVIORAL

To help patients shift perspective from pain and CRPS-symptoms, to increase body awareness, to create vivid imagenary, to increase the use of a CRPS hand with mindfulness exposure exercises, to increase flexibility in behavioral repertoire, to explore the fusion of emotions, automatic cognitions and learned responses and to help patients to integrate new skills in their lives.

Physiotherapy interventionOTHER

Graded motor imagenary with group and individual weekly sessions with daily practices at home.

Eligibility

Sex: FEMALEMin age: 18 YearsMax age: 65 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * CRPS type 1 for at least 6 months, * pain NRS 4 or more Exclusion Criteria: * major psychiatric or neurological disease

Locations (1)

Helsinki University Central Hospital

Helsinki, HUS, Finland

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Direction of change in patient reported CRPS symptom discriptors

Reports of CRPS symptoms

Time frame: Three months

Secondary Outcomes

Direction of change in motor parameters

Measurements of strength of the hand, the active range of motion in the hand/arm, 9HPT, DASH questionnaire

Time frame: Three months

Direction of change in psychological parameters

Patient scores in BDI, PASS-20, CPAQ

Time frame: Three months

Direction of change in quality of life

Patient scores in 15D

Time frame: Three months

Data from ClinicalTrials.gov

This platform is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional.