Understand the chronic pain!

Abstract

Chronic pain has been always difficult to manage for different reasons including a very complex and multi-factorial pathophysiology, which is still poorly understood, very limited treatment options, and not very sufficient conclusive research in the field of chronic pain. Because of the complex relationship between the central and the peripheral nervous system as well as the body’s hormones, chronic pain requires a multidisciplinary treatment approach. Chronic pain is different from the acute one, which is much easier to deal with because it has a well-known definite cause, however, chronic pain is usually very special and there isn’t a clear cause for it and no single treatment will cure it. Unfortunately, not every chronic pain patient understands the dilemma of his/her pain condition, therefore when they get referred to the pain clinic they go with very high and unrealistic expectations. In this short article, we will try to shed light on this very important problem helping chronic pain patients to understand the nature of their pain and advising them how to deal with it.