title: Severe complex regional pain syndrome type II after radial artery harvesting.
abstract: The radial artery is increasingly used as a coronary bypass graft. We report on a patient who developed a severe complex regional pain syndrome type II--also called causalgia--after radial artery harvesting. After an odyssey of diagnostic and presumed therapeutic procedures, she underwent surgical revision of the left forearm. Intraoperatively, a titanium clip in close neighborhood to the superficial radial nerve affecting the perineurium was found and removed, and more distally, a small neurinoma (3 by 4 mm) was resected. Despite presumed successful operation, symptoms did not improve. The patient presumably remains unable to use her left arm and hand.
authors.affiliation: schmid@uni-muenster.de
authors.forename: Christof
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Schmid
authors.forename: Tonny D T
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Tjan
authors.forename: Hans H
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Scheld
mesh_terms: D002422:Causalgia / Q000209:etiology* / Q000601:surgery; D001026:Coronary Artery Bypass; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009442:Neurilemmoma / Q000150:complications; D010524:Peripheral Nervous System Neoplasms / Q000150:complications / Q000601:surgery; D011183:Postoperative Complications; D017534:Radial Artery / Q000637:transplantation*; D012086:Reoperation; D014182:Transplantation, Autologous