Mirrors Help Phantom Pain

"I was laying in bed and it just, all of a sudden, it felt like I was getting shocked," he said. "I called the nurse, 'cause I was like, 'What's going on?' " The nurse told him, "This is probably your phantom pain."

 

Dr. Jack Tsao, a Navy neurologist with the Uniform Services University, explains it this way: "It's the sensation that the limb is still present, and phantom pain in particular is the sensation that the limb is experiencing pain of some form."

 

That pain is intense, and often medication brings very little relief. For Paupore, it was relentless.

 

Dr. Tsao was looking for ways to help soldiers like Paupore. He remembered reading in graduate school a paper by Dr. V.S. Ramachandran that talked about an unusual treatment for amputees suffering "phantom limb pain," using a simple $20 mirror.

 

The mirror tricks the brain into "seeing" the amputated leg, overriding mismatched nerve signals.

 

Paupore and 17 other amputees who joined Tsao's mirror therapy trial were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first group used the mirror to look at their reflected image as they tried to move both legs. The second group used a covered mirror and did the same. And members of the third group were asked to visualize moving their amputated limbs.

After a month of treatment, all of the patients in the mirror group had significantly less phantom pain. In the covered mirror group, only one patient experienced a decrease in pain, and for half of those patients, the pain worsened. Sixty-seven percent of the patients visualizing their limbs got worse instead of better. The pain decreased in almost 90 percent of the patients who then switched to mirror therapy.

 

It worked wonders for Paupore, 32. Within five months, he was off painkillers completely.

 

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