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An Introduction to Pain

Posted by ish on 30th April 2008 at 12:57 PM
An Introduction to Pain
This article is about physical pain in the narrow sense, and comes from wikipedia.org.

Pain, in the narrow sense of physical pain is a typical sensory experience that may be described as the unpleasant awareness of a noxious stimulus or a bodily harm. Individuals get acquainted to pain through various daily hurts and aches, and occasionally through more serious injuries or illnesses. For scientific purposes, pain is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage".

Pain is highly subjective to the individual experiencing it. A definition that is widely used in nursing was first given as early as 1968 by Margo McCaffery: "'Pain is whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever he says it does".

Pain is a major symptom in many medical conditions, significantly interfering with a person's quality of life and general functioning and is the most common symptom that causes individuals to seek medical advice. Diagnosis is based on characterising pain in various ways, according to duration, intensity, type (dull, burning or stabbing), source, or location in body. Usually pain stops without treatment or responds to simple measures such as resting or taking an analgesic, as termed acute pain, but it may develop into a condition called chronic pain. The study of pain has in recent years attracted many different fields from pharmacology to psychology and neurobiology. It is also a separate sub-discipline in some medical specialties, like anesthesiology or physiatry.

Pain is part of the body's defense system, triggering a reflex reaction to retract from a painful stimulus, and helps adjust behaviour to increase avoidance of that particular harmful situation in the future. Given its significance, physical pain is also linked to various cultural, religious, philosophical, or social issues.




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Report as offensive or innapropriate Comment by florence ( member )  4th May 2008
I think this is a good article; i have suffered chronic back pain for many years, perhaps you could do an article on Back Pain?.

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