Quantitative sensory phenotyping in chronic neuropathic pain patients treated with unilateral L4-dorsal root ganglion stimulation

BACKGROUND: In a previous study, we reported that selective dorsal root ganglion stimulation (DRG(STIM)) at DRG level L4 promoted a favorable outcome for complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) patients along with DRG(STIM)-related changes of inflammatory biomarkers in blood and saliva. The impact on somatosensation is largely unknown. Herein, we assessed the quantitative sensory profile to quantify L4-DRG(STIM) effects in CRPS patients. METHODS: Twelve refractory CRPS patients (4 female; 8 male; mean age 69 ± 9 years) received standardized quantitative sensory testing (QST) protocol at baseline and after 3 months of unilateral L4-DRG(STIM) assessing nociceptive and non-nociceptive thermal and mechanical sensitivity of the knee affected by CRPS and the contralateral non-painful knee area. RESULTS: At baseline, CRPS subjects showed significantly increased thresholds for warmth, tactile and vibration detection (WDT, MDT and VDT) and exaggerated pain summation (WUR). After 3 months of unilateral L4-DRG(STIM) all pain parameters exhibited trends towards normalization of sensitivity accumulating to a significant overall normalization for pain sensitivity (effect size: 0.91, p < 0.01), while with the one exception of WDT all non-nociceptive QST parameters remained unchanged. Overall change of non-nociceptive detection was negligible (effect size: 0.25, p > 0.40). Notably, reduction of pain summation (WUR) correlated significantly with pain reduction after 3 months of L4-DRG(STIM). CONCLUSIONS: Selective L4-DRG(STIM) lowered ongoing pain in CRPS patients and evoked significant normalization in the pain domain of the somatosensory profile. Thermoreception and mechanoreception remained unchanged. However, larger randomized, sham-controlled trials are highly warranted to shed more light on effects and mechanisms of dorsal root ganglion stimulation on quantitative sensory characteristics. The study protocol was registered at the 15.11.2016 on German Register for Clinical Trials (DRKS ID 00011267). https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00011267