This talk will be based on the fifth edition of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome: Practical Diagnostic and Treatment Guidelines, published in June 2022. There will be an emphasis on certain diagnostic issues, particularly the “fatal flaw” of using general consensus based diagnostic criteria (the “Budapest” criteria) to recruit subjects for research, and the need, rationale, and process for identifying clinically relevant mechanistic subsets of disease. The new COMPACT diagnostic guidelines, both the clinical and symptom based schemes, will also be discussed in some detail. Additionally, despite the aforementioned issues in using screening criteria for research inclusion, the talk will identify and discuss all the new and more effective treatments that are proven in the literature, with an emphasis on the multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary approach. Included will be interventional techniques and pharmacology in the multidisciplinary approach. Access to the guidelines will be given to all attendees.
