About Peripheral Neuropathy
Video transcription
Hi, my name's Kayti Brosnan. I'm a registered nurse here in Austin, Texas, and today, I'm going to talk to you about peripheral neuropathies. Peripheral neuropathies is any pain, numbness, tingling, or burning sensation that are present in your hands, your feet, sometimes your legs. You might also have sharp pain-like symptoms. And these are things that are most commonly brought on by a traumatic injury, by infection, by an exposure to toxins, and most commonly, by a secondary effect of diabetes. And so with treating this, you kind of want to know what's the underlying? If it's a traumatic injury, it's an acute episode of peripheral neuropathy, which might resolve itself. If it's not resolving itself, you want to...you want to treat the underlying disease. So your diabetes needs to be under control. Or if you've had exposure to toxins, you need the right treatment. Or an infection, you need the right treatment with that as well. And then if these things are not resolved through those routes, then there are medications that are most commonly used. The most common ones are medications also used for epileptics and for...as an antidepressant. So you've got your Neurontin or your Topamax, as well as Amitriptyline or Cymbalta. And so these tend to confuse the chemical responses and prevent from that pain from happening. Another is using over-the-counter pain medications. So you might be using ibuprofen or you might need something a little bit stronger like Codeine, which you need a prescription for, or something like a Lidocaine patch to stop the pain topically right in that area that you're having the most severe pain. And these are things that are going to be regulated and managed by your physician in the event that your peripheral neuropathies are not under control or being cured over time. So that's just a little bit about peripheral neuropathies.