The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and the Spanish Pain Society (SED) define pain as “an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience” that is “associated with actual or potential tissue damage”. There are two types of pain: acute pain, which makes it possible to locate a specific area or to know that attention is needed at a specific time. Chronic pain, on the other hand, is different, as it can last for weeks, months or years. Examples include cancer pain, fibromyalgia, arthritis or diabetes. Dr. Alba Violeta Gándara, specialist in Aurea Clinic’s Pain Unit, explains what it is.
What is the difference between acute pain and chronic pain?
Acute pain is pain that is usually relieved or eliminated when the injury or wound that causes it is resolved. It is a pain that follows or fulfills a very important physiological function that allows maintaining the homeostasis of the organism. This pain begins after receiving a nociceptive stimulation by the visceral or somatic tissue. The pain is maintained by the release of allogenic substances.
Chronic pain is when the duration of the pain exceeds a period of time between three and six months. It will be chronic pain when it is maintained despite the fact that the factors or causes that produced it have been cured or eliminated. At the same time, it should be noted that in cases of chronic pain, the pain does not fulfill any biological-defensive function, since it does not warn about the injury in an area, but rather maintains the pain of a problem that has already been treated.
Coping with chronic pain
Can chronic pain be eliminated? The answer is yes, but with nuances, since early diagnosis and identification of the problem that is causing the pain is essential. Chronic pain can be dealt with, even lived with, but in order for the pain treatment to be successful, the patient must see a specialist as soon as possible, who will advise him/her on the guidelines to follow.
However, in order to alleviate and put an end to the pain, a multidisciplinary and staggered approach of various therapies will be needed.
At the same time, it should be noted that the approach to chronic pain should always be carried out from a global point of view, always taking into account somatic pain -cutaneous pain and deep pain-, as well as the limitations it causes in the patient’s daily life, both socially and functionally, and the anxiety it generates in those affected.
The best way to deal with chronic pain is from a therapeutic strategy that will include from the simplest procedures to the most complex and invasive with the patient’s body.
Before starting any type of treatment for chronic pain, the first step should be to take a thorough medical history of the patient. Once this has been done, the basis for all the procedures that will gradually follow will have been obtained.
Depending on the needs detected in each case, it may be decided at first to start treatment with drugs, which can be combined with therapies based on infiltrations and other types of procedures, such as intravenous infusions, radiofrequency treatment, intrathecal infusion and neuromodulation.