Ana, Almansa (Albacete) goes to the clinic of Piñal y Asociados in Madrid with a diagnosis of reflex sympathetic dystrophy or Sudeck’s atrophy, after a previous failed intervention in her right hand: “it is the first time in four years that I sleep five hours in a row”.
The patient presents a clinical picture of intense pain at contact and functional difficulties not only in the affected hand, but also in the arm, elbow and shoulder. These symptoms limit their abilities over a period of four years, in which the patient is treated in the pain unit with multiple analgesic and neuromodulatory drugs such as fentanyl and pregabalin, for example.
Dr. Piñal performs a diagnostic reevaluation in which the injury of the patient is identified as a neurostenalgia of the median nerve and opens the door to the execution of a rescue surgery procedure.
Just one day after the intervention, the patient’s pain is drastically reduced and there is a remarkable recovery of mobility in the upper extremity.
Dr. Piñal does not consider Sudeck’s atrophy a pathology per se, but rather a diagnostic formula that masks an unidentified origin of the patient’s real problems, which appear after an intervention, a fracture or an infectious process, among other precedent pictures.
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