Pain in Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

SUMMARY An important and detrimental effect of spinal cord injury (SCI) is pain, which develops in approximately two-thirds of all SCI patients, while approximately half of SCI patients develop chronic neuropathic pain (NP). Thus far, there is no cure for SCI NP, and oral pharmacological intervention is often inadequate, commonly resulting in a pain reduction of only 20–30%. In this short review, we will present an overview of the important features of SCI pain including taxonomy, epidemiology and classification, as well as a suggested oral pharmacological treatment strategy for SCI NP and the current evidence available from randomized placebo-controlled trials. Considerations and evidence for the nonpharmacological treatment of SCI will be discussed briefly.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank research secretary HO Andersen for language revision.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

C Baastrup and NB Finnerup are supported by grants from the Velux Fonden. The authors are part of the Europain Project, funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking, grant no. 115007. NB Finnerup has in the past year received honoraria from Grünenthal and C Baastrup has received a travel grant from Astellas Pharma. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

C Baastrup and NB Finnerup are supported by grants from the Velux Fonden. The authors are part of the Europain Project, funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking, grant no. 115007. NB Finnerup has in the past year received honoraria from Grünenthal and C Baastrup has received a travel grant from Astellas Pharma. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.