Sickle cell pain: a critical reappraisal

Abstract

Sickle cell pain includes 3 types: acute recurrent painful crises, chronic pain syndromes, and neuropathic pain. The acute painful crisis is the hallmark of the disease and the most common cause of hospitalization and treatment in the emergency department. It evolves through 4 phases: prodromal, initial, established, and resolving. Each acute painful episode is associated with inflammation that worsens with recurrent episodes, often culminating in serious complications and organ damage, such as acute chest syndrome, multiorgan failure, and sudden death. Three pathophysiologic events operate in unison during the prodromal phase of the crisis: vaso-occlusion, inflammation, and nociception. Aborting the acute painful episode at the prodromal phase could potentially prevent or minimize tissue damage. Our hypothesis is that managing these events with hydration, anti-inflammatory drugs, aggressive analgesia, and possibly vasodilators could abort the crisis and prevent or minimize further damage. Chronic pain syndromes are associated with or accompany avascular necrosis and leg ulcers. Neuropathic pain is not well studied in patients with sickle cell disease but has been modeled in the transgenic sickle mouse. Management of sickle cell pain should be based on its own pathophysiologic mechanisms rather than borrowing guidelines from other nonsickle pain syndromes. (Blood. 2012;120(18): 3647-3656) IntroductionSickle cell disease (SCD) has been primarily considered a disease of children with a few patients surviving to adulthood. Between 1910 and 1950, the median survival of patients with SCD was Ͻ 20 years of age. 1 Sudden death occurred in ϳ 41% of the patients, whereas 29% deaths occurred within 24 hours after the onset of painful crises. 2 By 1980, 50% of children survived to 20 years of age; and by 2009, survival to age 20 years increased to 85% of children. 2 However, if we rewind the clock by more than a century when SCD was first described in the United States, we find that the first 4 SCD patients reported were adults with leg ulcers. [3][4][5][6] Before 1910, there were observations among adult African slaves suggestive of SCD with immunity to malaria and high prevalence of leg ulcers. 7 Moreover, autopsy on a slave with history of fever and respiratory illness in 1846 showed absence of the spleen. 8 The inevitable question then is: where were the children with SCD in the United States before 1910? There must have been children with SCD. The patient reported by Cook and Meyer 5 gave family history of brothers and sisters who died in early life of a disease associated with grave anemia. These children must have lived, suffered, and died prematurely, the dark side of the discovery of sickle cell anemia in the United States. 9 It was not until the early 1930s that children with SCD were recognized. Sickle cell pain between 1930 and 1960Between 1930 and 1960, the emphasis was on studying the basic science of SCD. This period witnessed quantum leaps in defining the specific molecular signature of SCD with the advent ...

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