Prosthesis With Information at Its Fingertips: Hand Prosthesis That Eases Phantom Pain

ScienceDaily (Aug. 9, 2010) — The pain of losing a body part is twofold, as patients not only suffer from wound pain. Often they are also affected by so called phantom pain. Unlike bodily wounds which will eventually heal, phantom pain often lasts for years and sometimes a lifetime.

"Phantom pain is very difficult to treat," says Professor Dr Thomas Weiss from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. "Mostly they prove to be highly therapy-resistant," the professor at the Department for Biological and Clinical Psychology says. In many cases the symptoms persist, in spite of high dosages of painkillers. This puts patients at a high risk of medication addiction, according to the pain research scientist.

But now scientists of the University of Jena give cause for hope to the affected patients. Together with the trauma surgeons of the Jena University Hospital, business partners and supported by the German Social Accident Insurance (Deutsche Gesetzliche Unfallversicherung, DGVU) Professor Weiss´s team modified conventional hand prostheses in order to reduce phantom pain after an underarm amputation.

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