Hi. Sorry to hear of your frustrations.

Please understand that there are a number of "treatments" that have put people into permanent remission [read: cure] if they are given during the acute stage of the disease, unfortunately, many people aren't given access to these treatments until later.

For the "gold standard treatment," check out, A unique presentation of complex regional pain syndrome type I treated with a continuous sciatic peripheral nerve block and parenteral ketamine infusion: a case report Everett A, Mclean B, Plunkett A, Buckenmaier C, Pain Med. 2009 Sep;10(6):1136-9, Epub 2009 Sep 9, ONLINE TEXT @ http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl...n_Plunkett.pdf

For everyone else, you have to go the mechanism by which chronic CRPS is maintained, abnormal thalamocortical activity in the brain.

Please check out (1) a current thread on this page, Motor cortex electrical stimulation: a promising therapy when all else has failed http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread145341.html and read the linked threads and articles, along with (2) an older one, RUL ECT as just maybe a cure for RSD (in perhaps 2 out of 3 patients) http://, http://neurotalk.psychcentr...read42529.html which has been put in a new context by Abnormal thalamocortical activity in patients with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) Type I, Walton KD, Dubois M, Llinás RR, Pain 2010 Jul; 150(1):41-51, Epub 2010 Mar 24, ONLINE TEXT @ http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl..._Pain_2010.pdf, the lead-off article in the first thread. (In establishing chronic CRPS as a disease of Thalamo-cortical Dysrhythmia (TCD), it now joins the ranks of Depression and Parkinson's disease, among others.) See, generally, Thalamocortical dysrhythmia: A neurological and neuropsychiatric syndrome characterized by magnetoencephalography, Llinás RR, Ribary U, Jeanmonod D, Kronberg E, Mitra PP, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1999 Dec 21;96(26):15222-7, ONLINE TEXT @ http://www.pnas.org/content/96/26/15222.full.pdf, an article such significance it received significant coverage in the New York Times when it was first presented, "New Way Of Looking At Diseases Of the Brain," October 29, 1999:

The neuroscientist, Dr. Rodolfo Llinas, a professor at New York University Medical School, presented his findings on Sunday night in Miami to some 4,000 researchers attending the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting.

Although the theory has not yet been subjected to peer review, a paper describing the work was submitted last week to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and accepted for publication in just two days. Dr. Llinas is a member of the academy, which often publishes the work of leading scientists or their proteges when the ideas are new and have not yet been tested by others.

''This work is very important,'' said Dr. Edward Jones, president of the Society for Neuroscience and director of the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California in Davis. ''What makes it so compelling is that it doesn't come completely out of left field. It builds on a body of work that's been growing for some time. Everyone will say wow, yes!''

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/26/sc...%201999&st=cse

And to see the importance of this development, as applied to CTPS, you only compare the juxtaposition of The Natural History of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, Schwartzman RJ, Erwin KL, Alexander GM, Clin J Pain 2009;25:273-280, ONLINE TEXT @ http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl...lexanderGM.pdf (in a study of 656 patients who had had CRPS for one year or more, 33 of whom had been seen by the lead author for over 20 years, none of the patients in the study demonstrated spontaneous remission of their symptoms), with, a case report from the same department and corresponding author published prior to the article by Walton et al, Treatment of CRPS with ECT, Wolanin MW, Gulevski V, Schwartzman R, Pain Phys. 2007;10:573-578, ONLINE TEXT @ http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl...chwartzman.pdf (a 42 year old former judge, who had left the bench due to CRPS - as confirmed by both physical examination and Quantitative Sensory Testing (QST) - that resisted all treatment, leaving her with, among other things, CRPS in all extremities, back, and face, osteopenia of the lumbar spine and both hips, as well as persistent gastroparesis, on account of which she eventually developed medically refractory depression, for which - 4 years into the CRPS - she received a series of 12 standard bitemporal electroconvulsive therapy (BL ECT) treatments, at which point ALL of her symptoms of depression and CRPS completely resolved - the latter finding confirmed by QST - and at the time of the publication of the case note, three years later, she remained completely free of both depression and CRPS and had returned to working fulltime as an attorney), an an article in which the authors dutifully noted that the "mechanism of action of ECT is still unknown."

Based upon their discussion of the effects of the delivery of electrical stimulation to the brain, but specifically through a relatively high risk treatment using the surgical placements of electrodes deep within the brain, Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), Walton et al, may have likely filled in that blank.

However, where it also appears that the pain scientists may not have been following the neurophysiology (EEG) literature over the last decade - until the article by Walton el al was published in Pain last spring - a point made in the commentary to that article, Thalamocortical dysrhythmia and chronic pain, Jones EG, Pain 2010 Jul;150(1):4-5, Epub 2010 Apr 14, ONLINE TEXT @ http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl..._Pain_2010.pdf, it's fair to say that the initial wave from the impact of this article has yet to reach the shore.

I hope this is useful.

Mike