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. Chronic pain conditions affect people of all ages. 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).

Is there any treatment?

Medications, acupuncture, injections, electrical stimulation, and brain stimulation, as well as surgery, are some treatments for chronic pain. Medication, meditation, relaxation exercises, biofeedback, and behavior modification may also be employed to treat chronic pain. (see treatments for specific kinds of 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 natural pain-killing molecules in their spinal fluid.

• Investigations of acupuncture include wiring the needles to stimulate nerve endings electrically (electroacupuncture), which some researchers have found to activate the natural pain killing systems in the body.

• Other experiments with acupuncture have shown that there are higher levels of the natural pain killing molecules patients’ cerebrospinal fluid following acupuncture.

• Investigators are studying the effect of stress on the experience of chronic pain.

• Chemists are creating new analgesic (pain-killing) medications and discovering pain-killing virtues in drugs not normally prescribed for pain.