Neuropathic Pain
What is Neuropathic Pain (NP)?
Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensation that normally occurs as a result of a stimulus. Sometimes this stimulus can come from changes that occur to nerves. Nerves send messages to the brain. This is a different type of pain called Neuropathic pain.
There are a number of causes of neuropathic pain, including:
- Diabetic neuropathy – damage caused to the nerves by diabetes mellitus
- Postherpetic neuralgia - pain following an episode of shingles which is due to a virus that causes chickenpox.
- Trigeminal neuralgias
- Spinal cord injury
- Diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis
- Surgery particularly amputations and chest and abdominal surgery.
Symptoms of Neuropathic pain
The symptoms of neuropathic pain include the feelings of:
Electricity
Broken glass
sunburn
Ants crawling on the skin
hot
shooting pain
Treatment
Neuropathic pain is the most difficult type of pain to treat. There is currently no cure for neuropathic pain and common pain relievers are ineffective in treating neuropathic pain.
There is high level evidence for the use of medications typically used to treat epilepsy (e.g Gabapentin and Pregabalin) and depression (the tricyclic antidepressants, particialrly Nortriptyline) as these are effective in reducing the intensity of the neuropathic pain.