This may be helpful, I don't know. About 4 years after developing CRPS, I was being worked up for what turned out to be an undiagnosed non-transmural MI (I had apparently presented a false negative on a thallium stress test a few months earlier, and had a normal EKG when they took me to the ER with severe chest pains in the middle of the night, so anything "cardiac" was ruled out, even though it later turned out that my mid LAD was fully occluded and I survived only due to "good collateral blood flow.") Anyhow, along the way, I was worked up by a pulmunologist who ordered periodic CT studies of my lungs, and about three months into the exercise we found a "ground glass formation," and subsequent CTs found it to be spreading. At that point, I went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN (they also have one in Jacksonville) where they were able to biopsy the lung tissue with a *bronchoscopy - the idiots in LA insisting that it could only be done via surgery through the chest wall notwithstanding the fact that the Mayo Clinic has been doing it this way for 30+ years - and came back with a diagnosis of sarcoidosis.

Now, my internist in LA, who's a very smart fellow, told me that I had to think of my CRPS, sarcoidosis and "Monoclonal Gammopathy of Uncertain Significance [MGUS]" as manifestations of one underlying disorder. And I'm still looking for the genius that can do that. But in the meantime, a great sarcoidosis specialist at USC has followed me, and we have seen the sarcoidosis go into spontaneous remission. (As it does most often in white males, were I an Afro-American female, it could of been a death sentence.)

Bottom line: have you been seen by a really good pulmonologist who has confirmed that you have RSD in your lungs? I would think that they would want to with a biopsy utilizing a bronchoscopy, which is a relatively non-invasive procedure, done under only mild sedation. The pathologist could then confirm that it was in fact CRPS by looking for evidence of focal small-fiber axonal degeneration. See, "Evidence of focal small-fiber axonal degeneration in complex regional pain syndrome-I (reflex sympathetic dystrophy)," Oaklander AL, Rissmiller JG, Gelman LB, Zheng L, Chang Y, Gott R
Pain 2006; 120: 235-243. [Free full text at http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl..._pain_2006.pdf ]

The reason I suggest this, is because if a biopsy shows that it's NOT RSD/CRPS, then other treatment options, including steroids, may be available.

Good luck,
Mike

*fluoroscopy assisted