Pemphigus pain: a review on management.

UNLABELLED: Pemphigus vulgaris is an autoimmune disease that commonly presents with painful persistent erosions and ulcers.

OBJECTIVE

The current literature has focused on managing and maintaining remittance of this life-threatening disease. However, remission is not instantaneous and chronic pain is common. In this manuscript, we review the current peer reviewed works that elaborate specifically on pain management in pemphigus patients.

METHODS

A medline search was preformed and included any case report, review, clinical trial, or other publication that covered the subject matter.

RESULTS

From the review of literature, it is clear that pain is an important and underemphasized part of the literature on pemphigus. The majority of pain management in these patients is based on clinical experience rather than randomized blinded clinical studies.

DISCUSSION: Large scale blinded randomized studies are lacking in this field, and would be of great benefit to academia and the patient population. Current large-scale studies of pemphigus would also be strongly enhanced by inclusion and reporting pain scale assessments.