A survey of current phantom limb pain treatment in the United States.

A survey of phantom limb pain treatment methods currently used by Veterans Administration hospitals, medical schools, pain clinics, and pain specialists in the United States was carried out to determine which treatments are in use, their success rates as estimated by their users, and experience with unsuccessful treatment methods used by patients prior to referral to the respondent. The combined results of a recent literature search and this survey identified 68 treatment methods of which 50 were commented upon by the survey respondents as being in current use. Only a few treatment methods were even moderately successful when subjected to the criterion of low failure rates after one year. Non-surgical treatment methods were far more successful than surgical ones. A possible treatment regime based on optimizing moderately successful methods is proposed for further study.