Mirrors helping amputees fight phantom pain

[unhappycamper]

Army Sgt. Nicholas Papoure demonstrates mirror therapy, a therapeutic technique designed to aid in the relief of phantom limb pain.


Mirrors helping amputees fight phantom pain
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, February 2, 2008

ARLINGTON, Va. — Physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have a new weapon to help amputees fight their way out of pain and back to normal living.

But it isn’t a new drug, researched at the cost of millions of dollars, or a complicated, computer-driven gizmo.

It’s a mirror, four feet long and a foot wide.

“I think it cost us $20 at Linens & Things,” said Navy Cmdr. Jack Tsao, an associate professor of neurology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.

That simple mirror is proving effective at relieving phantom limb pain — the puzzling, frustrating, often unbearable sensation an amputated limb is still attached to the body that plagues up to half of all amputees.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52124

[LiberalFighter]

1. Wow... and it doesn't require expensive machines