Case study response. Health, Medicine, Nursing Case Study

Phantom Limb Pain
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Phantom Limb Pain
Introduction
The ‘limb is gone’ pain knocks at the door. The pain comes with a burning, itching, and twisting sensation. Phantom limb pain is like the unconscious feeling that necessitates one to feel the absent limb is still present though some say it not painful; others say it is a sensation they feel in their bodies. It sometimes drives people to the edge of stress and depression to the verge of committing suicide (Feldman, 1981). Losing a limb is a difficult situation one can go through, especially after being amputated, there is that sensation that comes and alerts the patient that they still have the limb which pushes them to the edged of depression. The essay looks at the best theory that explains phantom limb pain and the nerve fibers responsible for the aching and burning sensation.
Gate theory
Different scientists have come out with approaches such as psychological and peripheral theory to describe and explain phantom limb pain, but the best theory ever drafted is the gate control theory. Understanding the process of chronic pain stems from the gate control theory, which includes factors that influence chronic, emotional, and sensory pain (Deardorff, 2017). According to researchers Patrick Wall and Ronald Melzack came up with the gate theory in the 1960s, stating that the spinal cord has a neurological gate that has neural networks along the dorsal horn, which acts as the passage. The portal either allows the pain or blocks it before relieving it at a specific point of the body when concentrated tactile stimulation is applied at the same position, through rubbing at that same painful position (Palaez and Taniguchi, 2015).
In Feldman’s (2017) article, he states that Melzack theory wrote: "that the loss of sensory input after amputation decreases the inhibition from the brain and increases the self-sustaining neural activity of the gate, thereby causing pain." Melzack and Wall's theory helped in the development of dorsal column stimulation and several drug treatments. The spinal cord has got sensory nerves that have...