Prevention of phantom limb pain by regional anaesthesla

Most patients who undergo major surgery do not end up with long-term pain. However, after certain procedures pain persists in an alarming percentage of patients. For example, phantom limb pain develops in more than 70% of patients years after amputation.1 We do not know why the incidence of phantom limb pain is so high, but we know from basic science and clinical studies that the transmission of noxious afferent input from the periphery to the spinal cord induces a prolonged state of central neural sensitisation, which amplifies subsequent input.