Proposed New Diagnostic Criteria for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

This topical update reports recent progress in the international effort to develop a more accurate and valid diagnostic criteria for complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). The diagnostic entity of CRPS (published in the International Association for the Study of Pain's Taxonomy monograph in 1994; International Association for the Study of Pain [IASP]) was intended to be descriptive, general, and not imply etiopathology, and had the potential to lead to improved clinical communication and greater generalizability across research samples. Unfortunately, realization of this potential has been limited by the fact that these criteria were based solely on consensus and utilization of the criteria in the literature…