In this issue of J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry, the paper by Gorson and colleagues1 describes 23 patients with neuropathic pain that is distributed in a non-length dependent manner (see page 163). In these patients, neuropathy can be distinguished from conventional length dependent small fibre neuropathy because the sensory disturbance involves proximal regions of the limbs, face and trunk, either sparing the acral extremities or with simultaneous involvement of distal and proximal areas. This pattern may suggest that the pathology is localised to small sized neurons in the dorsal root ganglia, although neuropathies where the clinical symptom is that of multiple mononeuropathy in a non-length dependent manner of painful symptoms, such as …