Abstract

Introduction: complex regional pain syndrome type one (CRPS-I) is a painful and debilitating disorder that often occurs in the extremities after an injury. Its etiology is unknown, although it is suspected that it is mediated by the central nervous system (CNS). The graded motor imagery (GMI) is a non-invasive therapy that consists of three progressive stages and attempts to modulate the pain of the affected limb to increase its functionality. This technique works through the activation, regulation and normalization of cortical networks involved in sensory-motor processing based on the fact that pain in the SDRC-I can be mediated by the incongruity of the sensory and motor information that reaches the CNS. The objective of the review was to evaluate the effectiveness of GMI in the treatment of CRPS-I. Material and method: a systematic review was carried out following the PRISMA norms of the clinical studies carried out until January 2019 in the PeDro, Cochrane, Pubmed and Scielo databases. PEDro scale was passed to the studies. The main variables evaluated were pain and motor function. Results: six articles were obtained which used the GMI for the treatment of CRPS-I. Conclusions: the effectiveness of GMI program in the treatment of CRPS-I cannot be assessed due to the lack of studies to obtain a bibliographic sample of the necessary size so that the results can be extrapolated.