Cryoablation may be a promising therapy to help relieve the chronic pain emanating from a phantom limb.
A team of interventional radiologists from Emory University treated 20 patients using this therapy on the nerves and scar tissue in their residual limbs. During the procedure, they placed a probe through the skin in the residual limb and dropped the temperature for 25 minutes to create an ablation zone, which shuts down nerve signals, according to a media release from the Society of Interventional Radiology.
The researchers asked the patients to rate their pain on a visual analog scale (VAS) that ranged from 1 (not painful) to 10 (extremely painful) before, 7 days after, and 45 days after undergoing the procedure. Before cryoablation, patients reported an average pain score of 6.4 points. By day 45, the average score was 2.4 points, per the release.
“Many of the nerves contributing to these pains are inaccessible to physicians without image guidance,” says research team member J. David Prologo, MD, assistant professor in the division of interventional radiology at Emory University School of Medicine, in the release.
“With the interventional radiologist skill set, we can solve tough problems through advanced image-guided therapies, and this promising treatment can target hard-to-find nerves and help amputees dramatically improve their lives—all in an outpatient setting,” he adds.
The team notes in the release that they will continue to examine the potential of this procedure by tracking its effectiveness at 6 months after treatment and beyond. They have also applied for a Department of Defense grant to further their research with this procedure.
The study explaining the procedure and results was presented recently at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s 2016 Annual Scientific Meeting.
[Source(s): Society of Interventional Radiology, Science Daily]
