According to the International Association on the Study of Pain (IASP), pain is defined as ” an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with or resembling that associated with actual or potential tissue damage.”
Acute pain generally lasts from a few minutes to less than six months. It is sudden in onset, intense, or sharp and is a warning sign of a disease or threat to the body. An injury, surgery, illness, trauma, or painful medical procedure can cause it, and it usually disappears with treatment or healing of the underlying cause.
Chronic or persistent pain persists or recurs for longer than three months. It affects an estimated 20% of people worldwide and is multifactorial: biological, psychological, and social factors contribute to the pain syndrome.
Neuropathic pain:
A lesion or disease of the nervous system causes neuropathic pain, which is a clinical description and may feel like a stabbing, burning, shooting, or sharp pain. It can also cause numbness, sensations like tingling, hot and cold, and pain to touch. Neuropathic pain can be a result of spinal cord injury, spinal nerve root impingement or compression, cancer, stroke, limb amputation, chemotherapy, radiation, or diabetes.
Nociceptive pain:
Nociceptive pain is caused by the direct stimulation of nociceptors (sensory receptors) in response to tissue injury or insult. Examples of this type of pain include musculoskeletal pain and visceral pain. Nociceptive pain is typically described as aching, throbbing pain.
Inflammatory pain:
Inflammation is classically associated with pain, heat, redness, swelling, and loss of function. Inflammatory pain is caused by the release of pro-inflammatory mediators at the site of tissue inflammation, such as pain due to tissue injury and infection and conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.
Mixed pain:
Mixed pain overlaps known pain types, such as nociceptive, neuropathic, and inflammatory, acting simultaneously and/or concurrently to cause pain in the same body area. It includes neck or lower back pain with a neuropathic component, lumbar spinal stenosis, sciatica, cancer pain, osteoarthritis pain, and chronic postsurgical pain. It is the most common type of pain and is managed with a multimodal approach.
It is a mixed type of pain and can be experienced by any cancer patient. There are several causes, including cancer pressing on the tissues, nerves, bone, or an organ nearby. Patients surviving cancer can also experience pain, e.g. chronic post-surgical pain, radiotherapy-related pain and chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy.
Pain management uses a multimodal treatment approach to provide pain relief and improve the quality of life for patients with chronic pain conditions.
What are the different types of Pain Management?
Pain management plans are tailored according to the type and severity of pain, the individual’s medical condition, and preferences. They usually combine medication, physiotherapy, psychotherapy and injections. A small minority of patients might need surgery to manage their pain in combination with the other management.
