Abstract
The day following the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the queue for amputations was more than 1,000 patients long. Surgeons therefore had to resort to guillotine-style amputations, which may increase the prevalence of phantom limb pain – the vivid impression that the limb is not only still present but extremely painful. We have previously shown (Ramachandran and Rogers-Ramachandran, 1996; Altschuler and Scott, 2011) that mirror box therapy using visual feedback may relieve pain present in a phantom limb. We explored the effectiveness in treating phantom limb pain with mirror box therapy in a disaster stricken area, specifically Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Lower limb patients were recruited from the Hanger Clinic, a prosthetics clinic on the campus of the Albert Schweitzer Hospital. Seventeen out of eighteen lower limb amputees reported a significant reduction in phantom pain while using mirror box therapy. The foundation was laid for the on-going practical implementation of this inexpensive and non-intrusive therapy. Further studies might explore how this therapy could best be integrated into the challenging medical environment of the region.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012