Tolerability of Suprascapular and Median Nerve Blocks for the Treatment of Shoulder-hand Syndrome

Shoulder-hand syndrome (SHS) in stroke patients is painful and lowers quality of life. Unfortunately, the cause of SHS is not known, diagnosing SHS can be difficult, and treating it can be hard. Recent research has shown that certain nerve blocks are good for treating shoulder pain for stroke patients, but no one has looked specifically as SHS. Investigators think that specific nerve blocks involving a shoulder nerve (the suprascapular, or SSc nerve) and a hand nerve (the median nerve) will be helpful in reducing SHS pain. Investigators will use ultrasound guidance to accurately inject these nerves. These injections have never been described for SHS patients however, so investigators want to make sure people with SHS can go through with the injections without too much pain or discomfort. That is, the investigators want to test the tolerance of these injections for people with SHS. Investigators are also hoping to better understand how consistent a set of diagnostic criteria, called the Budapest criteria, are at diagnosing SHS in order to be able to accurately diagnose this condition.