Every year, 15,000 cases of Sudeck’s atrophy are diagnosed, a chronic and very painful disease that affects the extremities, especially the hands.

Carla had been suffering from unbearable pain in her hand for 14 years. ‘Like a sledgehammer hitting you constantly,’ she describes. She had an accident at home and the discomfort grew day by day. She took all kinds of pills, especially sleeping pills, but nothing worked. She couldn’t even bend her fingers. She was diagnosed with Sudeck’s disease, but no treatment worked.

‘To live with the pain I had was better than not living at all,’ she says. Her situation was so critical that they inserted a machine into her body that gave her electric shocks. These slightly eliminated her sensory capacity and made everything a little less unbearable, but the remedy was not foolproof: ‘I was hooked up to the machine 24 hours a day,’ she recalls.

Dr Francisco Piñal has been studying this syndrome for 20 years and says that in many cases it is misdiagnosed. ‘I was treating a group of patients whose symptoms were mislabelled. There were also others who had a nerve problem that was not detected,’ says the surgeon at La Luz University Hospital. The doctor says that, when it comes to treating the type of pain associated with the disease, many things have been lumped together.
All this while, with a minimally invasive operation, the pain disappears completely: ‘We have seen that it can be solved with relatively simple surgery in most cases.’ Camila Rogabete is another patient. Before, she couldn’t even bend her hand: ‘I thought I would never have a normal life again, that it would be forever.’ She and Carla have just had surgery and are moved when they remember what they have been through.

In less than 24 hours, their lives have changed forever. ‘I came out of the operating theatre able to move my fingers without feeling any pain,’ she says. She describes it as something unthinkable. And although they still find it hard to believe, both of them are back to how they were: ‘I can play now, I can go to the swimming pool. I’m very happy.’