Correlations between the Changes of Pain and Temperature by Infrared Thermography in Central Poststroke Pain

摘要

Central poststroke pain can occur as a result of lesion or dysfunction of the brain from stroke, and may influence the autonomic nervous system to regulate the vasomotor activity which could result in the lowered skin temperature. In order to assess CPSP objectively, seventy patients with CPSP were evaluated as their pain with VAS pain score and the skin temperature of pain site by infrared thermography before and after pain treatment. And evaluated correlation between changes of temperature and VAS. The skin temperature of pain site was significantly lower than non-pain before treatment and improved after treatment (p<0.05), in accordance with significant improvement of VAS pain scores after treatment (p<0.05). And there was highly correlation between the changes of temperature and VAS (p<0.05). Therefore, it is suggested that the infrared thermography is very useful device for the evaluation of CPSP and its treatment.