Pain and pain management

There are five types of pain commonly felt by those with SCI.


Central Pain (Nerve Pain)
Central pain can cause you the most problems. You feel pain where you are not supposed to feel anything or where your feeling is different. Central pain often begins weeks or months after SCI. It can cause a pins and needles feeling, numbness, or a burning feeling throughout the area below your level of injury. The pain may be constant. At best, it is bothersome. At worst, it can be so severe that it limits your ability to function fully in life.
Doctors believe the cause of central pain may be changes in the functioning of nerves following SCI. They think that pain signals are really coming from somewhere other than where you think.

Root Pain (Nerve Pain)
The pain you feel at, or below, the level of injury is root pain. Root pain has a distinct pattern. It often begins days to weeks after injury and may worsen over time. You may feel brief waves of stabbing or sharp pain or a band of burning pain at the point where your normal feeling stops. You may find that light touch worsens this pain.

Mechanical Pain
Mechanical pain can range from sudden sharpness to dull and aching. Physical activity often makes the pain worse. You feel this pain in areas where you have normal sensation. Causes include muscle overuse or damage, unstable bone fractures, infection, or deforming change in your bones and joints.

Syrinx Pain
Sometimes as the spinal cord heals itself, a hollow, fluid filled cavity forms, called a syrinx. Although rare, it results in pain that varies in severity and can occur either above or below the site of injury. A syrinx can slowly increase in size and extend up or down the spinal cord. Syrinx pain develops months to years after injury. It can result in gradual loss of organ function, feeling, or movement.

Referred Pain
Referred pain is unusual because you feel it in areas away from the source of the problem. The site can be your organs, muscles, or other tissues. In areas where you cannot feel pain, you may see or feel increased muscle spasticity. For example, if you had a heart attack, the pain you might feel might be somewhere in your left arm and shoulder.