Dear Sandra -
Having had a bunch of them (at least 6) I can say that while they are not comfortable at all, they didn't do anything so far as I could tell to make my RSD/CRSP worse. (Although one unusually aggressive young doctor once managed to temporarily dislocate my knee cap, while manipulating my lower leg with a thin needle/electric probe stuck in the calf muscle: OUCH!!!) That said, while they can pick up all sorts of peripheral neuropathies, they do not catch the "small fiber neuropathy" that Dr. Oaklander has identified as emblematic of our common condition. "Evidence of focal small-fiber axonal degeneration in complex regional pain syndrome-I (reflex sympathetic dystrophy)," Oaklander AL, et al,
Pain, 2006;120:235-243. [Available on the RSDSA Medical Articles Archive page at
http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl...ive/index.html - scroll down to the heading "
Research" where it's listed alphabetically by author.]
For that, recent work has shown that the centuries old "pin prick sensitivity test" remains probably the best measure. See, "Concordance between epidermal nerve fiber density and sensory examination in patients with symptoms of idiopathic small fiber neuropathy," David Walk et al,
Journal of the Neurological Sciences 255 (2007) 23–26, and attached below.
That said, it is my understanding that doctors must on occasion rule out other forms of neuropathies or sometimes look for neuropathies than can be triggered by various treatments, including such things as thalidomide. I look at it as a necessarily evil and know that I will probably have to do it every year or two for the duration.
Mike