Visceral pain

Virtually every person will experience abdominal pain at some point. Although symptoms of pain are often vague and entwined with emotional overtones, careful assessment, combined with knowledge of the relationship of embryology and pain characteristics, will be most helpful to the clinician in diagnosing and using optimal mechanism-based treatment. Some pains are localized, and others ‘referred’; some pains are acute and potentially lethal, while others are chronic and ‘miserable’. ‘Total pain’ components such as worry, anger or depression always accompany and may exacerbate the severity of actual physical pain etiology. This chapter focuses particularly on the understanding the complexities and assessment of pain to enhance clinical acumen, leading to best practice management.