Abstract

MONFORT FAURE, J. Central sensitization in osteoarthritis. Rev. Soc. Esp. Dolor [online]. 2021, vol.28, suppl.1, pp.31-37.  Epub Mar 08, 2021. ISSN 1134-8046.  https://dx.doi.org/10.20986/resed.2021.3876/2020.

Pain in patients with osteoarthritis is a social and health problem of great magnitude and is responsible for the significant functional limitation and loss of quality of life in this disease.

Despite the important advances made in the knowledge of the pathophysiological mechanisms of pain, many questions about arthritic pain remain unanswered.

One of the least studied aspects of chronic pain in osteoarthritis is the phenomenon of central sensitization.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging has shown to be a useful technique for addressing this phenomenon.

Many studies carried out in patients with osteoarthritis with different degrees of sensitization show that the incidence of this phenomenon is high, that sensitized and non-sensitized patients show different patterns in terms of the magnitude of the cerebral response to pain and that the connectivity patterns differ from one disease to another.

Finally, in patients who are candidates for knee arthroplasty, it is important to evaluate the degree of sensitization prior to surgery, since it is the patients with the highest degree of sensitization who will present more torpid evolutions and higher levels of post-surgical pain.

Keywords : Osteoarthritis; pain; central sensitization; functional magnetic resonance imaging.

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