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| Pham Quy Thi shares his amazing outcome with Robert Johnson PT
On November 23, 2013, Pham Quy Thi, a Vietnamese farmer, did not expect that his chronic phantom limb pain would be reduced just by concentrating on the movements of his intact hand in a mirror for ten minutes. Mr. Pham had lost his right arm in 1977 because of an exploding cluster bomb and suffered chronic pain in his phantom limb since then.
After just ten minutes of using Mirror Therapy, Mr. Pham exclaimed, "This is an amazing therapy! It is my very first time I have the chance to be experienced this and I know it works for me. I surely will bring this home and teach other survivors in my community”. The fifty-eight-year-old was one of four land mine victims being trained by Robert Johnson of Achieve Orthopedic Rehabilitation and an Associate of End The Pain Project, to administer Mirror Therapy in a newly formed Peer-to-Peer program sponsored by Handicap International. The setting for this training workshop was the Mine Action Visitor Center run by Project RENEW in Dong Ha,Vietnam.
Mr. Le Kien was gardening in 1991 and struck a hidden cluster bomb. Not only did Mr. Le lose his left leg, he lost his baby daughter at the same time. Now a 55-year-old carpenter, he is a frequent guest speaker and story-teller at mine risk education programs for local school children.
In 1986, Hoang Xuan Phuong was tampering with an M14 mine also called a gravel mine in the vicinity of a former U.S. base when it exploded. Mr. Hoang was startled when he clearly 'saw' the mirror image of his lost arm. “It is the very first time, I can really recall my memory about my lost limb after more than twenty five years since the day I was amputated in a landmine blast”.
The four
volunteers at the Center also raise awareness of the many
unexploded mines in Quang Tri Province and promote and advocate for
the full application of the rights of persons with disabilities.
This group was newly formed by Phu Nguyen Thanh, Facilitator/Support Staff at the Mine Action Visitor Center in August, 2013. Once the quartet have completed their own 30-day mirror therapies, they will go into surrounding communities to help other amputees still suffering phantom limb pain. |
Showing posts with label phantom pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phantom pain. Show all posts
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Pham Quy Thi upper limb amputee sheds 36 years of phantom limb pain with Mirror Therapy
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
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| Huso, an upper limb Bosnian amputee in mirror session |
Huso practiced the mirror therapy at home for thirty days, following a two times a day for fifteen minutes each session schedule. The outcome as Huso happily reports, is that the pain is reduced about 75% from what he had been experiencing.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Free Mirror Therapy Offered to Boston Marathon Amputees to Relieve Phantom Limb Pain
So we urge you to share this information on Facebook and Twitter in the
hopes that it will reach a Boston Marathon Amputee in need. To donate
to this effective ETPP Outreach Project, click on http://endthepainproject.org/
.For further information contact info@endthepainproject.org. Thank you for your support.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
The inspiring full article Mushrooms-Help-Vietnam-Farmers-Maimed-by-War-Time-Munitions appears in the Gulf Times 3/17/13.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Hand Prosthesis Eases Phantom Pain
"Phantom pain is very difficult to treat," says Professor Dr Thomas Weiss from the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany.
"In many cases the symptoms persist, in spite of high dosages of painkillers. This puts patients at a high risk of medication addiction" the professor at the Department for Biological and Clinical Psychology says.
But now scientists of the University of Jena give cause for hope to the affected patients. Together with the trauma surgeons of the Jena University Hospital, business partners and support by the German Social Accident Insurance (Deutsche Gesetzliche Unfallversicherung, DGVU), Professor Weiss´s team modified conventional hand prostheses in order to reduce phantom pain after an underarm amputation.
A stimulation unit connected to the remaining part of the upper arm by a cuff plays a crucial part in the newly developed medical device.
"There are pressure sensors between thumb and index finger as well as on the thumb of the hand prosthesis," Professor/ Dr Gunther Hofmann, Director of the Jena Department for Trauma, Hand and Reconstructive Surgery explains.
Originally they were only meant to regulate the strength of grip of the artificial hand -- depending on what the patient wanted to pick up -- a raw egg or a hammer.
"Our system is now able to transmit this sensory information from the hand to the upper arm," says trauma surgeon Hofmann.
"The brain picks up the feedback from the prosthesis as if it was one´s own hand," Professor Weiss adds, explaining the cause for phantom pain: The brain structures that were originally responsible for the stimulus processing of the arm are suddenly "out of work" after the loss of the limb. This induces a functional re-organization of these brain regions.
"These areas take over the processing of sensory stimuli from other body parts, especially the arm stump and the face," says the Jena psychologist. As a result, intensified and sometimes painful sensations occur -- the phantom pain.
By means of the feedback between the artificial hand and the brain, provided by the Jena system, the re-organization of the brain is supposed to be prevented or to be reversed. "The first patients who have tested the system were very positive about it," Professor Hofmann was delighted to report. It is important now to test the feedback system on as many patients as possible, he added.
"We would like to know if the transmission of sensory information from the hand is helpful to only a few people or if it is a therapeutic for all wearers of artificial limbs," says Professor Weiss.
--ScienceNews 08/09/10
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
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