Acupuncture for the treatment of phantom limb syndrome 2
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Acupuncture for the treatment of Phantom Limb Syndrome: A randomised feasibility study
IRAS ID
152726
Contact name
Nicola Robinson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
London South Bank University
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Research summary
Approximately 56000
major limb amputations are carried out in the UK every year and people with diabetes are
particularly at risk. With diabetes on the rise, the incidence of amputation also rising. One common complication post
amputation is phantom limb syndrome. It is a long standing chronic condition with an incidence of 6080%,
is difficult
to treat and the benefit of pharmacological intervention remains unclear. Acupuncture has been shown to be effective
for treating chronic pain conditions but there is only limited research specifically evaluating acupuncture intervention for
the treatment of phantom limb syndrome.
The study aims to evaluate the feasibility of acupuncture intervention for the treatment of phantom limb syndrome and
pilot procedures. The study will be a comparative effectiveness study comparing acupuncture and standard care
versus standard care alone and will be a randomised controlled trial using a mixed methods approach.
Twenty lower limb amputees with phantom limb syndrome will be recruited from the Amputee Rehabilitation (inpatient)
Unit at Lambeth Community Care Centre and will be randomly assigned to either receive usual care or usual care plus
acupuncture. Acupuncture intervention will comprise 8 treatments over 4 weeks and treatment will involve using both
body and auricular acupuncture points. Usual care will include physiotherapy, occupational therapy, pharmacological
intervention and other routine interventions as deemed appropriate by clinical staff at the Amputee Rehabilitation Unit.
It is anticipated that data collection will take approximately nine months. Outcome data will also be collected from
participants one and three months post completion of the study. In order to identify protocol acceptability and
acceptability of outcome measures 5 participants will be interviewed post completion of the study.
Data from this study will guide the development of a full randomised controlled trial.REC name
London - Bloomsbury Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/LO/0817
Date of REC Opinion
29 Jul 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion