痛みに対するニューロリハビリテーション

抄録

Neurorehabilitation is one of rehabilitation techniques to elicit neural plastic changes in the central nervous system. The concept of neurorehabilitation is being applied to patients with chronic pain. The present review firstly explained about neural plasticity, and then mentioned phantom limb pain as a topic to explain how experts of rehabilitation conduct neurorehabilitation. Phantom–limb pain (PLP) is commonly classified as neuropathic pain following amputation, brachial plexus avulsion injury or spinal cord injury, and is often resistant to pharmacotherapy and traditional rehabilitation techniques. Patients suffering from PLP commonly experience a phantom limb that is paralyzed or fixed in one or more particular positions. Recent quantitative studies revealed that PLP patients commonly exhibit impaired voluntary movement in their phantom hand. Thus, neurorehabilitation techniques such as the mirror visual feedback method have been conducted in clinical practice to restore phantom limb movement. In the present review, we explained neurorehabilitation techniques using virtual reality system for phantom limb movement and pain. Additionally, we introduced neurorehabilitation using transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) to alleviate PLP.