Central Pain and Dysesthesia Syndrome

Central pain is defined as pain initiated or caused by a primary lesion or dysfunction in the central nervous system (CNS). 65 This definition is useless in that it fails to contribute in any way to either the diagnosis or the treatment of central pain syndromes (CPSs). The management and understanding of central pain would be simplified if all types of central pain associated with a lesion of the CNS shared a common characteristic; however, it appears that there are more exceptions than rules in either clinical presentation, underlying sensory abnormalities, or site of the presumed lesion. 8 In this article, I suggest that there are different CPSs that have some features in common. In addition, CPS seems to be fundamentally different from other pains.