Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a broad term describing excess and prolonged pain and inflammation that follows an injury to an arm or leg. CRPS has acute (recent, short-term) and chronic (lasting greater than six months) forms.
If you have CRPS you will have changing combinations of spontaneous pain or excess pain that is much greater than normal following something as mild as a touch. Other symptoms include changes in skin color, temperature, and/or swelling on the arm or leg below the site of injury.
Although CRPS improves over time, eventually going away in most people, the severe or prolonged cases are profoundly disabling. Because of the varied symptoms, the fact that symptoms may change over time, and the difficulty finding a positive cause in some cases, CRPS is hard to treat. There is no treatment that rapidly cures CRPS.
