Management of Pain Related to Traumatic Amputation in Civilians and Combatants
Includes a Live Web Event on 06/11/2026 at 10:00 AM (EDT)
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This webinar will take place on June 11, 2026, at 10:00 am EDT.
This webinar is complimentary to all. Non-IASP members will be allowed to join without having to pay a fee.
There is currently a lack of high-quality evidence to guide the management of pains following traumatic amputation (phantom limb pain, stump pain, secondary musculoskeletal pain). Additionally, evidence is limited to inform care for associated mental health conditions (depression, anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), as well as the moral consequences of trauma (moral injury, guilt, shame). Pain after traumatic amputation is a complex and multifaceted condition that does not readily lend itself to traditional randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodologies. Consequently, with the currently large number of traumatic-related amputees worldwide, critical knowledge needs to be derived from clinical expertise and accumulated experience.
The objective of this symposium is to provide a platform for experienced clinicians to present and reflect upon the expertise they are gaining through routine clinical care of individuals with traumatic amputations. By facilitating dialogue between clinicians with frontline experience and those seeking to enhance their practice, the symposium aims to promote shared learning and improve patient care. The meeting also aims to facilitate dialogue to explore potential options for clinical research.
The webinar will bring together clinicians and researchers involved in a number of initiatives addressing different aspects of pain management after amputation, including, among others, PAMELA (https://pamela.in.ua/), the UK ADVANCE project (www.advancestudydmrc.org.uk), Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, and the emerging IASP Pain After Traumatic Amputation (PATA) global initiative.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe the clinical features of phantom limb, residual, and musculoskeletal pain associated with traumatic amputation.
- Identify pharmacological, non-pharmacological, and surgical treatment approaches commonly used in the clinical routine for management of amputation-related pain in different healthcare environments, in low-, middle, and high-resource healthcare systems.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of these treatment approaches in alleviating pain in the different healthcare environments.
- Describe the clinical features of mental health conditions (depression, anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and moral consequences of trauma (moral injury, guilt, shame) which are associated with traumatic amputation.
- Identify treatment approaches commonly used in the clinical routine for the management of mental health conditions associated with traumatic amputation.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of these treatment approaches in low-, middle and high-resource healthcare systems. Participants will also be able to describe current approaches for research in this field and how they might apply them in the environments in which they work.
The session is designed for healthcare providers caring for people who have been injured by trauma and undergone an amputation. This would include: physicians (e.g., anesthetists, orthopedic /traumatology surgeons, plastic surgeons, rehabilitation), nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and prosthetists. The target audience also includes researchers studying clinical and mechanistic aspects of pain management after amputation
Symposium Agenda
Topic | Speaker |
Introductions: PAMELA Pain & Trauma SIG Pain Registry SIG
| Winfried Meissner, MD Dept of Anesthesiology & Intensive Care Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany Dominic Aldington, FRCA Department of Pain Medicine, Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester, UK David Holloway, PhD Electronic Persistent Pain Outcomes Collaboration, Australian Health Services Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia. |
Reflections on and describing the scope of amputation-related pains (phantom limb, stump, musculoskeletal) in areas of conflict, internationally | |
Armed Conflict-Related Post-Amputation Pain – A Long View | Andrew Rice, MD IASP President Professor of Pain Research, Imperial College London, UK |
Early Rehabilitation after Amputation in Ukraine: What are the 4 Priorities for MSF? | Tankred Stoebe, MD Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières Germany |
Pain after amputation due to war injury: Pilot data based on a 3-D-avatar. | Burkhard Gustorff, MD Director, Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Ottakring Hospital Vienna, Austria |
Phantom Limb Pain After Elective Amputation Surgery: Dynamics and Pain Quality | Sascha Tefalski, MD Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Charité University Hospital, Berlin, Germany |
Q & A |
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Techniques for treatment & assessment from different regions of the world | |
Surgical Approaches to Phantom Limb Pain: What is the Evidence? What are the Outcomes? | Jennifer Ernst, MD Hannover Medical School, Department of Trauma Surgery, Hannover, Germany |
The PAMELA project in Ukraine: What have we learned so far? | Volodymyr Romanenko, MD Ukrainian Medical Academy, Ukraine VItaly Marchenko Superhumans, Rehabilitation Center, Lviv, Ukraine |
Overcoming the Psycho-Social Burden of Amputation: How can this be done? | Jan Van Der Merwe, PhD Formerly: King Edward VII’s Hospital, Centre of Veterans’ Health, London, UK |
ADVANCE – A registry assessing trauma-related amputations: can these methods offer a template for the rest of the world? | Harriet Kemp, PhD, FRCA Pain Research Group, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, London, UK. |
Q & A Discussion and wrap up To advance management - where might we go next? | Winfried Meissner, MD Ruth Zaslansky, DSc |
Winfried Meissner (Moderator)
Head of Pain Unit and Palliative Care Department
Jena University Hospital
Winfried Meissner was appointed Head of Jena University Hospital’s Pain Unit in 1994, and Head of the Palliative Care Department in 2009. The Pain Unit covers all areas of pain management (acute pain service, outpatient service unit, inpatient consultation service, multimodal pain management program, interdisciplinary pain conference). Meissner and his group have initiated two large pain registries, QUIPS in Germany and PAIN OUT international, to improve postoperative pain management and to facilitate health service research. These projects resulted in more than 100 publications, including a couple of landmark papers. He was coordinator of European Commission funded IMIPainCare and subproject PROMPT (Providing Standardized Consented PROMs for Improving Pain Treatment).
In 2020, Winfried received the Robert G. Addison Award by the American Academy of Pain Medicine.
Winfried was President of the German Pain Society from 2021-2022 and Past President from 2023-2024. He is member of several national and international societies including ESAIC and IASP.
Winfried volunteers with the Johanniter Unfallhilfe (St John Ambulance), a humanitarian organisation affiliated with the Brandenburg Bailiwick of the Order of St John. Recently, he raised funding for PAMELA, a project aiming to prevent and treat phantom limb pain in Ukraine.
Winfried is married and has five children.
Dominic Aldington, FRCA (Moderator)
Department of Pain Medicine
Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester, UK
Dr Dominic Aldington, originally a consultant anaesthetist, currently works exclusively on pain management, with expertise in acute and chronic pain, including migraine. He has authored over 75 publications in leading journals and presented internationally. A member of the British Pain Society and IASP, he serves as Chair of IASP’s SIG on Pain of Torture, Organised Violence and War.
David Holloway, PhD (Moderator)
Director
Electronic Persistent Pain Outcomes Collaboration, Australian Health Services Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Wollongong
David Holloway joined the electronic Persistent Pain Outcomes Collaboration (ePPOC) as Director in May 2022, after an extensive career in both the public and private sector, most recently as Director of Quality and Safety for an Australian community nursing and aged care organisation. ePPOC has been collecting pain outcomes data for more than a decade across Australia and New Zealand and is currently progressing towards the third iteration of its dataset.
David has held a varied range of operational management and clinical governance roles covering both face-to-face and telehealth delivery models and completed his PhD thesis on the efficacy of virtual environments in increasing competence and confidence of nursing students in relation to medication administration.
Andrew Rice
Professor of Pain Research
Imperial College London
Andrew Rice is Professor of Pain Research at Imperial College London and President of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). He earned his medical degree from St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in 1982 and his research doctorate from St. Thomas’ Hospital Medical School in 1991. Andrew underwent specialist training in Oxford and at St Thomas’ Hospital before joining Imperial College in 1995. He led the Pain Research Group at Imperial College from its inception in 1995 until 2026. His research spans neuropathic pain in infectious diseases (HIV, Herpes Zoster, HTLV-1, leprosy), diabetic neuropathy, and peripheral nerve trauma and amputation, with a focus on improving translational research and evidence synthesis.
Andrew chaired the IASP Presidential Task Force on Cannabis and Cannabinoid Analgesia and the Scientific Programme Committee for the 2020 World Congress on Pain. He previously served as an IASP Councilor and was elected President-Elect in 2022. Andrew is an Honorary Consultant in Pain Medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, stepping aside from clinical practice in 2023 to fulfill his presidential duties.
Tankred Stoebe, MD
Doctors Without Borders Germany
Dr. Tankred Stöbe is a specialist in Internal, Intensive and Emergency Care Medicine. His first project with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Germany was in Thailand/Myanmar in 2002. Since then his has taken part in more than 30 missions with Doctors Without Borders in Syria, Haiti, the Gaza Strip, Ukraine, and Sudan. Tankred Stöbe has also held various positions within Doctors Without Borders, including serving on the German board in 2004 and serving as president of the German section from
Burkhard Gustorff, MD
Director, Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care
Ottakring Hospital. Vienna, Austria
Professor Burkhard Gustorff is Chair the Department for Anaesthesia, Intensive care and Pain Medicine at the Ottakring Clinic in Vienna. He has been active in pain therapy and pain research for over 20 years with a focus on neuropathic pain, pain diagnosis using QST and invasive pain therapy. Burkhard has gained considerable experience in postgraduate education and university teaching and sees himself someone who can bridge over between knowledge gained from research and the clinical routine. Collaborating with colleagues in Ukraine, including the rehabilitation center Superhumans, Burkhard has set up the Ukrainian-Austrian Pain Management School. They plan to hold the school at least twice a year, engaging multidisciplinary professionals, including physiatrists, rehabilitation experts, anaesthesiologists, neurologists. The goal is to establish a sustainable national pain management system grounded on a multidisciplinary approach and aligned with European clinical standards.
Sascha Tefalski , MD
Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care
Charité Medical Center, Berlin, Germany
Professor Sascha Tafelski is a senior consultant, clinical scientist, anesthesiologist, and specialist in pain medicine. Sascha has over a decade of experience at the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care at Charité Medical Center, Berlin. Starting in April this year, he will take up a professorship focused on postoperative neuropathic pain at the University Hospital Greifswald in northeastern Germany
Jennifer Ernst,MD
Director of the Innovative Amputation Medicine
Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (MHH), Hannover, Germany
Dr Jennifer Ernst is Director of the Innovative Amputation Medicine, Department of Trauma Surgery, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (MHH). Jennifer is a specialist in Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery. She has expertise in modern surgical techniques such as targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR), osseointegration, and Agonist-Antagonist-Myoneuronal-Interface (AMI).
Volodyymr Romanenko, MD
Neurologist, Headache and Pain Specialist
Ukrainian Medical Academy, Ukraine
Dr Volodymyr Romanenko is a neurologist, Headache and Pain Specialist, Consultant at the Institute of Family Medicine. He serves as President of the Ukrainian Headache Research Society, Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Association for the Study of Pain, and European Pain Federation EFIC Councillor for Ukraine. Volodymyr’s areas of clinical and scientific interest include headache, neuropathic pain, and low back pain. He co-leads the PAMELA project with Winfried Meissner.
Vitalii Marchenko
Senior Physical Therapist
Superhumans Rehabilitation Center
Vitalii Marchenko is a senior physical therapist at Superhumans Rehabilitation Center in Lviv, Ukraine. Vitalii works with amputees, helping them to adapt to prosthetics and restore function.
Jan Van Der Merwe, BA Hons Clin Psych, MA Clin Psych, DTh, CPsychol, AFBPsS
Dr. Jan van der Merwe has been active in the private and public sectors as a Clinical Psychologist for over 30 years. Jan was the clinical lead psychologist of interdisciplinary pain management teams at King Edward VII’s Hospital in London (Veteran-Specific Pain Management Programme); Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, London; and the Real Health Institute, London. Jan has contributed to scientific meetings and has published research articles, chapters and studies over the years, and continues to be engaged in such activities.
Harriet Kemp, PhD, FRCA
Senior Clinical Lecturer
Pain Research Group, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Dr Harriet Kemp is a Senior Clinical Lecturer within the Division of Anaesthetics Pain Medicine & Intensive Care. She is an Honorary Consultant in Pain Medicine at Chelsea & Westminster NHS Foundation Trust where she leads a specialist neuropathic pain service. Harriet’s main research interests are the long term, pain-related, outcomes associated with traumatic injury and critical illness. Harriet sits on the Project Board of the Armed Services Trauma and Rehabilitation Outcome (ADVANCE) study which investigates the physical and psychosocial outcomes of combat injury (www.advancestudydmrc.org.uk). She leads the pain research for ADVANCE to understand pain-related outcomes in veterans and armed forces personnel. Her studies include sensory profiling through quantitative sensory testing, identification of blood and tissue-based markers and patient reported outcome measures. She has also led systematic review work identifying pain prevalence and risk factors for pain following traumatic injury.
Ruth Zaslansky, DSc (Moderator)
Scientific Director of PAIN OUT
Jena University Hospital
Ruth Zaslansky, DSc. Trained as a pain neurophysiologist. Currently Scientific Director of PAIN OUT, an international quality improvement and research network working to improve management of postoperative management. PAIN OUT has been involved in many projects in low resource countries – working with local healthcare providers to assess pain-related patient reported outcomes, treatments for post-operative pain and implement quality improvement projects. In IASP, Ruth is secretary of the Pain Registry SIG.
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