Chronic Pain and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome: A Review of Literature

Chronic pain can evolve slowly or during the acute phase of injury, only to become a habilitative and quality of life complication beyond the medical and rehabilitative treatments phases of recovery and health maintenance. The seriousness of any pain condition may eclipse the attention of acute health care providers and can evolve into a potential retardant to the injured person for achieving medical and rehabilitative treatment goals. The purpose of this article is to bring to the attention of life care planners and case managers the prevalence of chronic pain among adults in the United States as well as the cost of chronic pain to the U.S. healthcare system. Additionally, we hope to impress upon the reader the significant effect that chronic pain can have in the recovery process of the person for whom a life care plan may be developed. We also present to the reader a review of complex regional pain syndrome Types I and II (formerly reflex sympathetic dystrophy [I] and causalgia [II]). In this article, we will address the complexities of chronic pain, in particular complex regional pain syndrome, the growing prevalence and costs of this disease process, and current diagnosis and treatment strategies applied to resolve pain conditions that may evolve from a primary catastrophic or non-catastrophic injury