Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a devastating chronic pain condition affecting 50,000 new patients every year in the U.S. Unfortunately, conventional methods for examining musculoskeletal damage such as physical exam or electrodiagnostic methods are very difficult to use for CRPS patients due to their extreme sensitivity to pain. In this abstract, we demonstrate the feasibility of [18F]FDG PET/MRI for investigating musculoskeletal changes from CRPS. Our results show the improved sensitivity of [18F]FDG PET to muscular, neurovascular, and skin changes over MRI, suggesting that [18F]FDG PET/MRI can be a valuable tool to monitor the pathologic process of CRPS.
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