Mirror Therapy for Phantom Limb Pain

Abstract

tion or observes another person performing an action. 4 Alternatively, visual input of what appears to be movement of the amputated limb might reduce the activity of systems that perceive protopathic pain. 5 Although the underlying mechanism accounting for the success of this therapy remains to be elucidated, these results suggest that mirror therapy may be helpful in alleviating phantom pain in an amputated lower limb.

The Effects of Graded Motor Imagery and Its Components on Chronic Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Three other studies evaluated individual components of GMI 2,3,23 . No studies primarily evaluated left/right judgements; however, two studies 25, 26 evaluating GMI provided sufficient data to enable calculation of effect sizes for the two weeks of left/right judgement training.…”

“…No studies primarily evaluated left/right judgements; however, two studies 25, 26 evaluating GMI provided sufficient data to enable calculation of effect sizes for the two weeks of left/right judgement training. Three studies 2,3,23 evaluated the effects of mirror therapy on chronic pain. Two studies 2, 3 evaluated the effects of motor imagery.…”

“…In the second study, participants spent thirty minutes per day doing either mirror therapy or motor imagery, depending on their group allocation 2 . In the third study, participants spent fifteen minutes per day doing either mirror therapy or motor imagery, depending on their group allocation 3 . Follow-up data from these studies were collected either at four weeks 2, 3 or six months 23 .…”

“…The chronic pain conditions included CRPS 2, 25, 26, 28 , PLP 3,25 , and pain following stroke 23 . Studies including children were excluded from this review.…”

“…Michielsen et al 23 presented additional bias in that they failed to report any baseline similarities or differences between groups on pain. Two other studies also failed to report whether groups had similar baseline pain levels 2,3 . This lack of this information has implications for the validity of the observed effect sizes as it is uncertain whether differences found between groups may have been influenced by baseline group differences.…”