Hi Tracey

If I may be so bold - I think you need to push both doctors to try and get a more definitive diagnosis one way or another. It is possible to have CRPS without the typical presentation of neuropathic pain as a burning pain. It is much less common - if, for example, you look at the Professional Treatment Guidelines that are in place in the Netherlands, they reviewed what evidence is available on CRPS and estimate that only a very small percentage of CRPS cases are estimated to be what they call "cold". I fall into that category. I have a definitive CRPS diagnosis - there is no doubt about that, but I have the deep, cold aching form of neuropathic pain. I have had the odd experience of hot burning pain over the 13.5 months that I have CRPS but it has generally been much less strong or intense than the cold pain and typically fairly short lived. I live with the aching, cold pain all of the time and have the same sort of drug treatments as would be used for the burning pain.

Apparently, the evidence available to the professional team who worked up the Dutch Protocols is that the "cold" form carries a higher risk of spread or "new" CRPS symptoms appearing in a different part of the body following a subsequent injury or trauma so it is worth being aware of this.

There are some pretty comprehensive and strict diagnostic protocols for CRPS which are designed to minimise the risk or under or over diagnosis and you might want to look at these or get your doctors to review and test you in accordance with those. If you go to the RSDSA website you can access the treatment guidelines there and they have the tables and diagnostic criteria all set out with reference to the relevant international conferences where they were discussed/amended etc. You can also access the English version of the Dutch documentation (both patient and professional versions) from their site. You have to display a certain number of symptoms and signs in various categories to have a CRPS diagnosis and they have been worked up taking into account the fact that symptoms can vary from person to person and that there is no single, definitive test for CRPS.

Hope that helps - take control of your care and get hold of as much reliable and good, detailed information as you can so that you are able to let your docs see that you are well informed.