View clinical trials related to Post-stroke Pain.
Filter by:Chronic neuropathic pain is defined as pain caused by a lesion or disease of the somatosensory nervous system. It is highly prevalent, debilitating, and challenging to treat. Current available treatments have low efficacy, high side effect burden, and are prone to misuse and dependence. Emerging evidence suggests that the transition from acute to chronic neuropathic pain is associated with reorganization of central brain circuits involved in pain processing. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a promising alternative treatment that uses focused magnetic pulses to non-invasively modulate brain activity, a strategy that can potentially circumvent the adverse effects of available treatments for pain. RTMS is FDA-approved for the treatment of major depressive disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and migraine, and has been shown to reduce pain scores when applied to the contralateral motor cortex (M1). However, available studies of rTMS for chronic neuropathic pain typically show variable and often short-lived benefits, and many aspects of optimal treatment remain unknown, including ideal rTMS stimulation parameters, duration of treatment, and relationship to the underlying pain etiology. Here the investigators propose to evaluate the efficacy of high frequency rTMS to M1, the region with most evidence of benefit in chronic neuropathic pain, and to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify alternative rTMS targets for participants that do not respond to stimulation at M1. The central aim is to evaluate the pain relieving efficacy of multi-session high-frequency M1 TMS for pain. In secondary exploratory analyses, the investigator propose to investigate patient characteristic that are predictive of responsive to M1 rTMS and identify viable alternative stimulation targets in non-responders to M1 rTMS.
The Investigators will enroll patients who have had a stroke and are experiencing post-stroke pain secondary to their infarct and disruption of the sensory system in a research study to compare the effectiveness of Scrambler Therapy to traditional pharmacologic therapies.
Chronic pain affects 1 in 4 US adults, and many cases are resistant to almost any treatment. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) holds promise as a new option for patients suffering from treatment-resistant chronic pain, but traditional approaches target only brain regions involved in one aspect of the pain experience and provide continuous 24/7 brain stimulation which may lose effect over time. By developing new technology that targets multiple, complimentary brain regions in an adaptive fashion, the investigators will test a new therapy for chronic pain that has potential for better, more enduring analgesia.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) holds promise as a new option for patients suffering from treatment-resistant chronic pain, but current technology is unable to reliably achieve long-term pain symptom relief. A "one-size-fits-all" approach of continuous, 24/7 brain stimulation has helped patients with some movement disorders, but the key to reducing pain may be the activation of stimulation only when needed, as this may help keep the brain from adapting to stimulation effects. By expanding the technological capabilities of an investigative brain stimulation device, the investigators will enable the delivery of stimulation only when pain signals in the brain are high, and then test whether this more personalized stimulation leads to reliable symptom relief for chronic pain patients over extended periods of time.
Pain affects up to 30% of the general population. In particular, neuropathic pain (NeP) is caused by lesion or desease affecting peripheral or central somatosensory pathways and affects 7% of the adult population. Despite the availability of evidence based pharmacological and surgical treatment for NeP, about 50% of patients remais symptomatic despite best medical treatment. Some neuropathic pain syndromes are specially refractory. In particular, central NeP is caused by disease or lesion to central structures involves in somatosensory integration of nociceptive information is non-responsive to drugs usually employed in other NeP syndromes. Classical neuromodulatory techniques such as conventional repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation aiming at the motor of prefrontal cortices are ineffective to relieve pain in this population. Recently new technology advances have made possible non-invasive stimulation of deeper cortical targets. Some of them are activelly involved in the integration of the perception of pain, such as the anterior cingulate cortex or the posterior insula. The aim this study is to treat 90 patients with central pain (post stroke pain, spinal cord lesions after trauma or demyelinizating diseases) under best medical pharmacological treatment in three different conditions: AAC (n= 30 with the H-Coil), Superior Posterior Insula (SPI) n=30 cooled double cone coil double cool coil, and sham(n=30). Each patients will undergo daily stimulation for a week, then weekly stimulations for 3 months (total of 17 sessions). The main study outcome is pain relief at the last stimulation week (visual-analogic scale). Secondary end-points are changes in the McGill Pain Questionnaire, Neuropathic Pain Symptom Inventory, DN4 questionnaire, SF -36, brief pain inventory and cognitive assessment including the trail making test A and B, Strrop color interference test, and subscalles from the CERAD. All patients will undergo quantitative sensory test and measurements of cortical excitability over M1 before and after to treatment.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of cortical stimulation (CS) as an adjunctive treatment for chronic neuropathic pain.