The worlds first study of how chronic pain can effect stroke survivors has displayed how it alters body perception, as the brain tricks patients into believing their affected hand is a different size, which can increase the risk of accidents.
US and Australian researchers discovered that there is a strong likelihood in stroke patients with persistent pain to mistakenly believe their hand that is affected by stroke, is actually smaller or bigger than it really is.
The researching team, including international pain expert Professor Lorimer Moseley, surveyed 523 stroke survivors.
They found that individuals living with chronic pain were almost three times as likely as pain free survivors to experience altered body perception.
Their findings suggest that rehabilitation to address distorted body perception in stroke survivors may improve outcomes, as stroke is a leading cause of disability worldwide and accurate perception of hand size is critical to holding or manipulating objects.
Professor Moseley says: “There are two striking findings in our study.”
“First, that three out of five stroke sufferers are living with chronic pain, which is up to 300 per cent higher than in the general population.
“Second, that those with pain are also more likely to perceive major changes in how their body feels to them. This is a potential double whammy, making daily activities more difficult and affecting quality of life.”
Persistent pain (duration of longer than three months) and stroke are both associated with impaired cognition, further fatigue, anxiety and depression, and distortions in body perception.
Distorted body perception has previously been linked to a range of conditions, such as post-amputation, severe chronic pain and eating disorders, however, it has not previously been associated with pain after stroke.
Moseley says: “The next step is to identify whether body perception disturbance is contributing to pain in these patients. If it is, we need to devise treatments to address this.”
It was found that distorted body perception was twice as likely when post-stroke pain was in the hand, which is consistent with other chronic pain populations such as knee osteoarthritis, where up to 30 per cent of individuals believe their knee is swollen when it isn’t.
Moseley concludes: “These remarkable findings show us that we are perhaps more complex creatures than we previously thought.”
The researchers did not find any link between chronic pain and strokes occurring on a specific side of the body.
