1:00pm Thursday 29th July 2010
By Reg Little
PATIENTS who have lost limbs are helping Oxford researchers with a major study into phantom limb pain.
Oxford’s Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre is recognised internationally for treating and rehabilitating people who have lost limbs.
Now researchers from the centre and from Oxford University are embarking on a three-year study that should shed new light on how the brain adapts following hand amputation.
The work could play an important role in developing better rehabilitation techniques for accident victims and others who have suffered limb loss.
It is hoped the work will increase understanding of phantom limb pain, where people have feeling in a limb sometimes many years after it was amputated.
The centre’s rehabilitation consultant David Henderson Slater, senior clinical investigator on the study, said they would be recruiting people who had lost a hand or arm, along with non amputees.
He said the aim was to increase understanding of the brain’s ability to reorganise itself in response to limb amputation or nervous system injury.
Dr Henderson Slater said: “We are particularly interested in the relationship between brain re-organisation and phantom limb sensation, or pain following amputation.
“It can be difficult to control or predict when it will strike and it can be very debilitating.”
The team will use magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of volunteers.
In some cases patients about to undergo amputation will be scanned before and after their operation.
Angela Williams, who lost her right arm above the elbow after a car accident when she was 10, has already agreed to take part.
Ms Williams, 57, who helped set up the support group Onward Without Limbs (OWL), which meets monthly at the NOC, recently had a new electric arm fitted. But more than 40 years after her accident she said she still sometimes feels pain in the part of her arm she lost.
She said: “Some people suffer from phantom pain much more than others.
“I remember how once it used to itch. For many years I could feel a sharp pain shooting through it.
“It can still happen and it tends to be at night when I’m in bed. I have to get up and make a cup of tea, or read a book. The more you think about it, the worse it becomes. It’s something I’ve learnt to cope with over the years,” she said.
The study is being led by Dr Tamar Makin, of the university’s Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain, based at the John Radcliffe Hospital.
He said: “Specific parts of the brain control different parts of the body. Our research will test what happens to parts of the brain controlling the arm and hands when the limb is missing.”
Hands occupy one of the largest sensory parts of the brain and use more sensory neurons than other parts of the body.
Researchers also want to recruit people born without an arm or hand as there is evidence those with congenital limb deficiency have different visual activity in the brain.
Anyone wishing to take part in the project should contact 01865 737304/ 727295 or OCE@noc.nhs.uk
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