What is Neuropathic Pain?
Neuropathic pain is now defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as ‘pain caused by a lesion or disease of the somatosensory nervous system’. International Association for the Study of Pain. IASP Taxonomy. Pain terms. Neuropathic pain. Updated 2017 Dec 14. www.iasp-pain.org/Taxonomy#Neuropathicpain
This means the cause of the pain is a problem in the nerve pathways that deliver messages from a body part to the brain, not in the body part itself. So it might feel as if a leg is on fire and being stuck with needles when the leg is actually cool and nothing is touching it at all.
There are many causes of neuropathic pain . For example, nerves can be injured or cut during surgery, or caught up in scar tissue with healing. They can be damaged by poorly controlled diabetes. They can be damaged by viruses – this is the cause of Post Herpetic Neuralgia which can follow shingles, and in HIV painful neuropathy.