Table of Contents
What is Chronic Pain?
Is there any treatment?
What is the prognosis?
What research is being done?
Organizations
What is Chronic Pain?
While acute pain is a
normal sensation triggered in the nervous system to alert you to
possible injury and the need to take care of yourself, chronic pain
is different. Chronic pain persists. Pain signals keep firing in the
nervous system for weeks, months, even years. There may have been an
initial mishap -- sprained back, serious infection, or there may be
an ongoing cause of pain -- arthritis, cancer, ear infection, but
some people suffer chronic pain in the absence of any past injury or
evidence of body damage. Many chronic pain conditions affect older
adults. Common chronic pain complaints include headache, low back
pain, cancer pain, arthritis pain, neurogenic pain (pain resulting
from damage to the peripheral nerves or to the central nervous
system itself), psychogenic pain (pain not due to past disease or
injury or any visible sign of damage inside or outside the nervous
system).
Is there any treatment?
Medications, acupuncture,
local electrical stimulation, and brain stimulation, as well as
surgery, are some treatments for chronic pain. Some physicians use
placebos, which in some cases has resulted in a lessening or
elimination of pain. Psychotherapy, relaxation and medication
therapies, biofeedback, and behavior modification may also be
employed to treat chronic pain.
What is the prognosis?
Many people with chronic pain
can be helped if they understand all the causes of pain and the many
and varied steps that can be taken to undo what chronic pain has
done. Scientists believe that advances in neuroscience will lead to
more and better treatments for chronic pain in the years to come.
What research is being done?
Clinical investigators have
tested chronic pain patients and found that they often have
lower-than-normal levels of endorphins in their spinal fluid.
Investigations of acupuncture include wiring the needles to
stimulate nerve endings electrically (electroacupuncture), which
some researchers believe activates endorphin systems. Other
experiments with acupuncture have shown that there are higher levels
of endorphins in cerebrospinal fluid following acupuncture.
Investigators are studying the effect of stress on the experience of
chronic pain. Chemists are synthesizing new analgesics and
discovering painkilling virtues in drugs not normally prescribed for
pain.
