Complex Regional Pain Syndrome - History and Nomenclature

History and Nomenclature

The condition currently known as CRPS was originally described during the American Civil War by Silas Weir Mitchell, who is sometimes also credited with inventing the name "causalgia." However, this term was actually coined by Mitchell's friend Robley Dunglison from the Greek words for heat and for pain. Contrary to what is commonly accepted, it emerges that these causalgias were certainly major by the importance of the vasomotor and sudomotor symptoms, but stemmed from minor neurological lesions. Mitchell even thought that the CRPS etiology came from the cohabitation of the altered and unaltered cutaneous fibres on the same nerve distribution territory. In the 1940s, the term reflex sympathetic dystrophy came into use to describe this condition, based on the theory that sympathetic hyperactivity was involved in the pathophysiology. In 1959, Noordenbos observed in caulsalgia patients that "The damage of the nerve is always partial". Misuse of the terms, as well as doubts about the underlying pathophysiology, led to calls for better nomenclature. In 1993, a special consensus workshop held in Orlando, Florida, provided the umbrella term "complex regional pain syndrome," with causalgia and RSD as subtypes.