The best study about the outcome of RSD and the advanced stages of RSD has been written by Dr. Poplawski from Canada which was published in 1983. He showed that RSD diagnosed in the first 2 years has a chance of successful treatment in 80% of the patients and after two years each year drops the percentage of the success significantly. From Dr Hooshmand's RSD puzzles (puzzle #057~ "The Stages and Outcome of RSD")...

It seems to me that if you are a) young or b) diagnosed early along you will usually recover.

I am young, so I am hopeful that I will recover from RSD. I was just looking for other people's sucess stories, so they could tell me what they did to recover.

RSD puzzle#022-
Possible Timelines Of RSD Recovery


"Will RSD always be with you even if you recover from an original injury?

If RSD is treated early and properly, it will not hang around forever. It will definitely improve and in better than 80% of the cases when treated in the first 6 months it completely cleared up. After two years the percentage of success drops precipitously. The main exception is among children and teenagers. In this group there is such a strong recovery power that the prognosis is usually excellent and it is hard to mess them up with improper treatment with these patients the sympathetic dysfunction after successful treatment becomes asymptomatic. On can always pick the abnormalities up on thermography or in occasional cases on bone scan tests in a patient who is otherwise asymptomatic, but these tests show sympathetic dysfunction. The sympathetic dysfunction alone is not the same as RSD (Please see RSD Puzzle #1 "What is RSD").


H.Hooshmand, M.D.

Be sure to check out the whole puzzle list: http://www.rsdrx.com/rsdpuz4.0/001.htm