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CRPS (chronic regional pain syndrome) is a debilitating, chronic condition that is difficult to live with. It can physically affect virtually every area of your life, and may lead to stress, anxiety, and suffering.
If you develop CRPS due to someone else’s negligence, the expert CRPS lawyers at The May Firm can help you.
Read on for our comprehensive guide to CRPS, its causes, symptoms, and potential treatments. We also address what your legal options may be and how our firm’s California CRPS attorneys can aid you in receiving any compensation you deserve.
What Is CRPS?
CRPS is not well understood – and thus often hard to diagnose – but neurologists and other medical experts have established some solid facts about it.
As a neurological condition, CRPS affects the nerves. It changes how the brain perceives different stimuli, such as touch and temperature. This often causes sufferers to experience excessive levels of pain and discomfort.
Although there is no definitively agreed-upon cause of CRPS, it usually surfaces after an injury. Rather than recovering as normal, the brain continues to perceive pain because nerves are injured or traumatized. Over time, this causes the nerve signals within the body to change, producing a phenomenon often called “fault signaling.”
- The pain from CRPS is usually far greater than what the patient suffered from the original injury.
- In severe cases, even simply touching a patient’s skin can cause serious pain.
- CRPS is hard to manage because it often takes long to diagnose. By the time a patient receives a diagnosis, the condition has often progressed significantly.
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Causes of CRPS
CRPS is a complicated condition, one that often leavesphysicians and medical professionals – not to mention patients and CRPS attorneys – with more questions than answers. While the syndrome is often associated with traumatic injuries, it’s not clear why some people develop CRPS post-injury while others don’t.
Additionally, it’s unclear why a minor injury such as a cut may trigger CRPS while a more serious injury, like a broken arm, doesn’t (although either could potentially be the root of this condition).
- In over 90% of cases, CRPS stems from a traumatic injury.
- The most common triggers include sprains, fractures, and limb immobilization (requiring braces).
- Soft tissue damage, including seemingly non-serious cuts and burns, can also lead to CRPS.
Given the wide variety of ways in which CRPS emerges, it’s sometimes difficult to ascertain how it started in the first place. While some CRPS cases arise from repeated injuries to the same limb, others develop after one isolated injury. It’s up to your doctor to examine medical evidence to determine how your CRPS developed, while your CRPS lawyer investigates the circumstances of the injury to uncover important contextual information.
Serious personal injury accidents such as those listed below can cause CRPS:
- Automobile accidents
- Medical malpractice
- Slip and falls
- Workplace accidents
- Motorcycle accidents
- Dog bites
Although your first priority should be seeking treatment, it’s also crucial to get advice from a personal injury lawyer after an accident. This is especially important in CRPS worker’s comp cases where your professional livelihood is on the line.
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SIGNS OF CRPS
CRPS typically affects the limbs and may cause numerous side effects and symptoms. Doctors often look at the combination of symptoms when pursuing a diagnosis, because no single test can confirm CRPS. Other conditions with similar symptoms must be ruled out before concluding that CRPS is the root cause.
The key symptom of CRPS is constant, severe pain that lasts far longer than what you would expect given the injury . This can range from a “pins and needles” sensation (like sciatica) to extreme burning or shooting pain.
A broken bone may take six to eight weeks in a cast to heal. However, if your broken leg is still causing you serious pain six months later, there’s a good chance your injury may have triggered CRPS. A physician should begin running tests to make a diagnosis.
In some cases, a patient may experience pain in the opposite limb – for example, feeling discomfort in the left leg even though their right leg sustained the injury.
Fortunately, physicians have identified a list of major symptoms typically indicative of CRPS:
- Swelling
- Burning Pain
- Changes in Skin Temperature
- Stiffness
- Temperature Difference Between Limbs
- Redness and Discoloration of the Skin
- Extreme Sensitivity to Touch
- Extreme Pain
- Abnormal movement in the affected limb
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How Does CRPS Work? A Timeline
Once triggered, the cycle of CRPS typically unfolds in five recognizable, distinct stages:
- 1. Initial Injury
CRPS begins with an injury to a limb or another part of the body. It can range from a minor needle poke to a serious fracture. - 2. Pain Impulse in the Brain
The initial injury triggers a pain response in the brain. Sensory nerves carry the impulse to the central nervous system. - 3. Pain Impulse in the Spinal Cord
The pain impulse in the brain triggers a corresponding impulse in the sympathetic nervous system, which then travels to the initial injury site. - 4. The Pain
You begin to feel ongoing pain at the site of the injury. Over time, this will likely get worse without treatment, and the pain has no cure.Generally, CRPSwill get worse over time. Even after the original injury has healed completely, you will always experience some degree of pain from an injury that no longer exists – until and unless you seek help from a pain management specialist.
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Risks of Leaving CRPS Untreated
CRPS is not a condition that can be left untreated. Without pain management therapy, you could suffer from serious, even debilitating, complications, such as the following:
- Loss of dexterity
- Muscle atrophy
- Chronic pain
- Permanent disability
This syndrome can never be completely healed, even with extensive pain management therapy. If CRPS flourishes without treatment, the consequences are effectively life-altering.
The chronic pain itself can be difficult enough to deal with. It can easily become an endless cycle of hurting, all the while wondering if and how you will ever feel better. Losing your dexterity or experiencing muscle breakdown is unimaginable. Untreated CRPS will dramatically decrease your quality of life, and could lead to depression or other mental health difficulties.
If you suspect you might be suffering from this condition, get checked out by a doctor immediately, and then contact the complex regional pain syndrome lawyers at The May Firm.
Common Treatments of CRPS
Unfortunately, there is no known cure for CRPS. Physicians and pain management specialists can only treat the symptoms of CRPS and attempt to make patients more comfortable.
Treatment for CRPS will often vary from one patient to another. The most common treatment plans for CRPS include the following:
Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation
Physical therapy is often used to treat CRPS. Exercise can be helpful for maintaining the dexterity and general function of the injured limb, and can help eliminate some of the pain associated with the syndrome. In more serious cases, occupational therapy can help CRPS patients learn new ways to perform essential tasks.
Because both physical and occupational therapy are sometimes painful in their own right, a doctor may prescribe pain medication to make the exercises more tolerable.
Psychotherapy
Suffering from any chronic painful condition can have a detrimental effect on your mental health. Depression and anxiety (at varying degrees of severity) are among the most common psychological side effects of CRPS and can complicate the rehabilitation process. In addition to (or in lieu of) prescribing psychiatric medication, your physician may recommend psychotherapy to help you cope with (and hopefully overcome) any mental illness that may develop from your chronic pain.
Spinal Cord Stimulation
In some cases, a spinal cord stimulator may be implanted through a needle into the spine. The stimulator can be turned on and off as necessary. Unfortunately, roughly one-quarter of patients develop some sort of complication associated with the equipment, which requires additional surgeries. This method has been relatively helpful in treating chronic pain, but it’s quite invasive.
Because of the complications it can lead to, spinal cord stimulation may be one of the last courses of treatment recommended by your doctor.
Alternative Therapies
Some CRPS sufferers have experienced relief from their symptoms through the use of alternative therapies such as acupuncture and chiropractic treatment. These methods are far less invasive than other methods and typically pose fewer health risks. Their effectiveness may vary from patient to patient.
Medications
There is no single medication developed specifically to treat CRPS. However, physicians and pain management specialists may recommend one or more drugs to make various CRPS symptoms more manageable. Some of these medications include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Anti-inflammatory drugs to treat moderate pain (ibuprofen, etc.)
- Opioids to treat severe pain (morphine, oxycodone, etc.)
- Topical anesthetic creams (lidocaine)
- Corticosteroids to treat inflammation (prednisone)
Additionally, antidepressants and other psychiatric medications may be prescribed to treat the psychological effects of dealing with chronic pain.
Sympathetic Nerve Block
This method involves injecting an anesthetic next to the spine to block pain signals and improve blood flow. While patients may experience short-term chronic pain relief from a sympathetic nerve block, it typically doesn’t last longer than three to six months at a time. Therefore, patients that choose this route must return to their pain management specialist to receive treatment several times each year.
The sympathetic nerve block procedure is costly because it must be repeated every few months. With that said, it appears to be one of the more effective ways of temporarily easing a patient’s CRPS pain.
Ketamine Treatments
In recent years, experts have started experimenting with low doses of ketamine, a strong tranquilizer, to treat CRPS. Ketamine is administered intravenously (through an IV) over a period of several days to minimize or even eliminate the pain symptoms associated with CRPS.
This method is still relatively experimental but appears to be useful in treating chronic pain that has not responded to other methods.
As with other pain relief methods, ketamine treatments are only effective temporarily and must be repeated periodically.
What Is a CRPS Lawsuit?
If no identifiable party or parties were at fault in the injury that led to your CRPS, legal action isn’t an option. By contrast, you may be able to bring a CRPS lawsuit if:
- You’re injured in an accident (e.g., a car accident)
- Someone else (such as a distracted driver) caused the accident
- Your injuries include neurological injuries: limb numbness, tingling, back or neck trauma
- You then develop symptoms of CRPS
CRPS cases are not easily quantified. As a result, insurance companies may argue that a victim’s injuries are not so significant. They may even refute the CRPS diagnosis, and try to settle for less than the victim deserves. The California CRPS attorneys at The May Firm make it our duty to protect patients from such outcomes.
Whether you develop CRPS from medical malpractice or an accident, you can call on our expert personal injury lawyers for assistance.
The Costs of CRPS
There is no question that CRPS is expensive. Because there is no single diagnostic test for the syndrome, physicians must eliminate all other potential causes of your symptoms before they can affirmatively conclude that you suffer from CRPS.
Paying for test after test can place an incredible financial burden on the shoulders of someone suffering from CRPS.
Receiving an official diagnosis will not end your avalanche of medical debt. CRPS is a lifelong ailment for which there is no cure thus far. Once diagnosed, you’ll spend the rest of your life treating the symptoms, leading to ongoing medical bills.
Because of the inevitable costs associated with CRPS, it’s so important to reach out to a personal injury attorney with expertise in handling CRPS cases if the injury that resulted in your development of this syndrome stemmed from another person’s negligence or recklessness.
ATTORNEYS WHO DON’T KNOW OFTEN MISS THIS DIAGNOSIS
The symptoms of CRPS can be consistent with a number of other conditions and diseases. Therefore, it is easy for a physician without expertise in CRPS to misdiagnose a patient and provide treatments that don’t work for months or even years before the correct diagnosis is made. The elusiveness of CRPS means a lot of unnecessary extra pain for sufferers.
If physicians can miss a CRPS diagnosis, an attorney without the requisite expertise can also miss this condition! The May Firm recognizes that symptoms of CRPS can be the same as those of other injuries or conditions, so we are careful to keep CRPS in the back of our minds when assessing a client’s case.
If, for example, a client comes into our office with their left hand tinted blue, we would advise them to consult a doctor about CRPS rather than assuming that it may be a circulation problem and pursuing that route exclusively. It is important to us that our clients receive the appropriate medical treatment to ease their suffering, and the only way for that to happen is if we do our own due diligence when assessing what we think the injury that we would be filing a claim over actually is.
No diagnosis means no lawsuit to compensate you for your pain. You must have a doctor diagnose you with CRPS before you are able to file a civil suit against the person who caused the injury that triggered your CRPS. Because The May Firm knows CRPS, we can recognize the symptoms and suggest that you ask your doctor about the condition to put you on the path toward diagnosis. Few other firms can say the same!
THE MAY FIRM HAS HANDLED CRPS CASES
People don’t always think to contact an attorney when they’ve been hurt by someone else. They also don’t typically think to reach out to a lawyer if the consequences and symptoms of their injury are persistent and refuse to go away. Many suffer in silence when they shouldn’t have to.
Just like it’s important to see a doctor for treatment, both for the initial injury and for any resulting complications, it’s also important to reach out to an experienced personal injury attorney to assess your legal options for compensation.
A CRPS lawyer can be your ally in the process of holding the at-fault party responsible for causing your injuries. If someone else caused your injury and that injury resulted in the development of CRPS, you are entitled to compensation for your pain and associated medical expenses.
The May Firm has experience handling CRPS cases. To date, we have won every CRPS case that has come into our office. We have been able to recover adequate compensation for our clients. We know how to find the link between your initial injury and the development of your CRPS and can articulate that in court.
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THE MAY FIRM HAS RELATIONSHIPS WITH PHYSICIANS WITH CRPS EXPERTISE
The May Firm has established positive relationships with a number of physicians specializing in CRPS across California. In short, our CRPS lawyers can get you help. We can tie you into a network of doctors and pain management specialists who have experience with diagnosing and treating the symptoms of CRPS.
As you begin to travel down the road to recovery, you will likely need the assistance of different types of doctors—not just your primary care physician. The May Firm can introduce you to some of the best pain management specialists in California!
Our CRPS attorneys can help you build a medical network while we fight your legal battle.
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The May Firm will work tirelessly to prove a direct link between your injury and the development of your CRPS. Then, we’ll take on the person responsible for your injuries in court while you recover and treat your symptoms.
The outcome of your case will impact the rest of your life, so The May Firm will ensure that it is handled properly. We have years of experience taking on CRPS cases and winning large settlements for our clients – let us fight for you.
The May Firm has offices in San Luis Obispo, Bakersfield, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, San Diego, Fresno, Chula Vista, Ventura, and Long Beach. Give us a call at (866) 678-4711 to schedule your free consultation!
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