Professionals

Professionals

Pain is whatever the patient describes - 'it hurts'.

Pain is defined as a sensory & emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage.

Chronic pain is pain without apparent biological value that persists beyond normal tissue healing (usually taken to be three months).

Chronic pain can either be due to malignancy or to non-cancer related causes.

It can grossly be classified neuropathic pain (due to primary lesion or dysfunction of the nervous system) or nociceptive (due to tissue nociceptor involvement following mechanical, thermal or chemical injury). Not infrequently, both the subtypes co-exist.

Psychological and social factors have significant impact in chronic pain experience. Management needs muldimensional approach to adress the complete bio-psycho-social model.