ABSTRACT
Verily, it is a thing wondrous strange and prodigious and which scarce can be credited, unless by such as have seen with their eyes and heard with their ears, the patients who many months after the cutting away of the leg, grievously complained that they felt exceeding great pain of that leg so cut off. Modern brain imaging has led to a greater understanding of potential causes of phantom pain initiated by deafferentation of neural pathways after limb loss, facilitating cortical reorganization of somatotopic maps. Phantom pain is described by a number of descriptors such as burning, tingling, cramping, shocking, and paresthesia-like. Amputees may experience an unpleasant itch to more severe clenching and squeezing sensations. Telescoping of phantom pain and sensations includes the shrinking or fading of the sensation over time. Animal models have demonstrated that after injury to a nerve, primary afferent axons regenerate or sprout acquiring abnormal properties including spontaneous discharge and abnormal sensitivity to noradrenaline.
