A treatment being used to treat a post-COVID symptom has also been used with some success to treat phantom limb pain. The treatment, a stellate ganglion block, is a minimally invasive procedure that may be able to restore the sense of smell experienced by people with long COVID, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
Part of the autonomic nervous system, which regulates involuntary processes including heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and digestion, the stellate ganglia are nerves on each side of the neck. They deliver certain signals to the head, neck, arms, and a portion of the upper chest.
The research team used a stellate ganglion block to treat the parosmia, the loss of sense of smell, by injecting anesthetic directly into the stellate ganglion on one side of the neck to stimulate the regional autonomic nervous system, the same method used when treating phantom limb pain. The minimally invasive procedure takes less than ten minutes, and no sedation or intravenous analgesia is necessary. CT guidance was used to position a spinal needle at the base of the neck for injection into the stellate ganglion. The researchers added a small dose of corticosteroid to the anesthetic in the pharmacologic preparation, suspecting that the COVID virus may be causing nerve inflammation.
