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Published on: July 10, 2014
Residual limbs of amputees are significantly cooler than contralateral intact limbs
R Norman Harden1, Christine M Gagnon, Michael Gallizzi
1The Center for Pain Studies, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA. nharden@ric.org
Objective:
To test the hypothesis that distal residual limbs (DRLs) have significant vasomotor abnormalities.
Design:
Comparative surface temperature studies of DRLs using paired samples (DRL vs. similar site on intact contralateral limb).
Subjects/Patients:
Thirty-six volunteer subjects with unilateral, upper or lower limb amputations were recruited and evaluated at a pain research center in an urban academic rehabilitation facility.
Methods:
Our main outcomes were subjects' residual limb temperature as measured by quantitative infrared telethermography (qIRT), temperature strips, and examiner's palpation, compared with the contralateral limb.
Results:
The qIRT showed that the DRLs were significantly cooler than the corresponding area of the contralateral intact limbs (P < 0.01). The difference using temperature strips supported this finding (P < 0.05); while on physical examination, 39% of the residual limbs were perceived by the examiner as cooler than the corresponding unaffected limbs.
Conclusions:
DRLs as measured by qIRT were significantly cooler than the corresponding area of the contralateral intact limbs. A better understanding of these findings may be important in elucidating the pathophysiology of relevant clinical features such as a potential sympathetic component of postamputation pain.
