Sensory functions in chronic neuralgia.

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Patients (11) with sustained neuralgia, in most cases after traumatic nerve lesion, were subjected to quantitative sensory testing with thermal and non-noxious mechanical stimuli. Measurements were made in the pain area and at a homologous site on the contralateral normal side. All patients were hypoesthetic with raised thresholds for warm and cold or touch, or both. Thermal pain thresholds were also raised in some patients but lowered in others indicating hypersensitivity of the nociceptor system or dysesthesia for thermal input. In 6 patients single mechanical stimuli produced a painful response above the touch detection threshold. Reaction time measurements indicated that this painful response was the result of a central dysfunction rather than of peripheral sensitization. The response to suprathreshold mechanical pulses was measured by magnitude estimation as a function of stimulus amplitude. The results were fitted by power functions, as in normal skin, but with steeper slopes on the abnormal side. Suprathreshold hyperesthesia (recruitment) may exist in the presence of normal threshold functioning.