Complex regional pain syndrome type I: Associated visual sensorimotor case findings

Objective: The objective was to present new visual sensorimotor findings in a patient with complex regional pain syndrome type I, formerly known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy. Design: Clinical measurements were compared for the following visual sensorimotor tasks before and after 10 minutes of near visual stimulation: accommodation, vergence, and reading eye movements. Patient: The patient was a 19-year-old female university student with complex regional pain syndrome type I. Results: All visual sensorimotor findings worsened dramatically after performance of the brief near visual task. In addition, the patient experienced severe dizziness, nausea, dull eye ache, and general fatigue, which persisted for 30 to 45 minutes following each test period. Conclusions: The patient manifested signs and symptoms of complex regional pain syndrome type I per the prior neurologic diagnosis, as well as the newly diagnosed accommodative infacility, accommodative insufficiency, convergence insufficiency, and deficits of saccades and pursuits, which were severely debilitating. The findings neither support nor refute the conventional notion of abnormal sympathetic mediation as a mechanism of fatigue and pain. However, the diagnoses of accommodative infacility and insufficiency suggest abnormal parasympathetic activation. Further investigation is needed to characterize the array of visual dysfunctions in a large sample of such patients, which may help elucidate the precise underlying neurologic causes of the sensorimotor deficits in these patients.