The use of thermography in sympathetically maintained pain.

This paper reviews the symptomatology, pathophysiology, and treatment of reflex sympathetic dystrophy and sympathetically maintained pain. It is the author's experience that there exists a group of patients who present with chronic, unexplained pain following trauma, but lack the physical findings and positive investigative tests to confirm the diagnosis of reflex sympathetic dystrophy. For these patients, thermography serves as a useful and sensitive test to diagnosis sympathetically maintained pain. This paper presents six case reports in which thermography was used to diagnosis sympathetic dysfunction as the cause of chronic pain.