Tolerability of Suprascapular and Median Nerve Blocks for the Treatment of Shoulder-hand Syndrome
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2018-10-14
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Shoulder-hand syndrome (SHS) in stroke patients is painful and lowers quality of life.
Unfortunately, the cause of SHS is not known, diagnosing SHS can be difficult, and treating
it can be hard. Recent research has shown that certain nerve blocks are good for treating
shoulder pain for stroke patients, but no one has looked specifically as SHS. Investigators
think that specific nerve blocks involving a shoulder nerve (the suprascapular, or SSc nerve)
and a hand nerve (the median nerve) will be helpful in reducing SHS pain. Investigators will
use ultrasound guidance to accurately inject these nerves. These injections have never been
described for SHS patients however, so investigators want to make sure people with SHS can go
through with the injections without too much pain or discomfort. That is, the investigators
want to test the tolerance of these injections for people with SHS. Investigators are also
hoping to better understand how consistent a set of diagnostic criteria, called the Budapest
criteria, are at diagnosing SHS in order to be able to accurately diagnose this condition.