[The clinical effect of intravenous regional sympathectomy with guanethidine in the management of sympathetically maintained pain].

We treated 25 patients suffering from sympathetically maintained pain with intravenous regional sympathectomy with guanethidine. Of these patients, 18 had reflex sympathetic dystrophy; 5 had causalgia; and 2 had shoulder hand syndrome. The visual analog scale before IRS therapy was 6.1 +/- 0.3, and after therapy, it was 2.3 +/- 0.4. The mean rate of improvement was 54.2% in reflex sympathetic dystrophy and 81.0% in causalgia. The therapy was particularly effective in patients with shoulder hand syndrome. These results suggest that intravenous regional sympathectomy with guanethidine could be effective for sympathetically maintained pain.