First Question: Is the pain Nociceptive or Neuropathic?

 

Acute Nociceptive Pain

Acute Pain is the normal, predicted physiological response to an adverse chemical, thermal, or mechanical stimulus associated with surgery, trauma, and acute illness.
See General Principles.

 

Chronic Nociceptive Pain

Chronic Pain is a pain state which is persistent and in which the cause of the pain cannot always be removed or is difficult to treat. Chronic Pain may be associated with a long term incurable or intractable medical condition or disease.

Other factors i.e. mood, social circumstances, family support etc, may contribute to overall disability associated with chronic pain.
See General Principles.

 

Or Neuropathic ?

Neuropathic pain is pain generated by neurological injury. Patients complain of spontaneous (those that arise without detectable stimulation) and evoked pains (abnormal responses to stimuli) in a distribution consistent with the neurological injury and associated with sensory abnormalities. The spontaneous pains can be continuous or episodic. Evoked pains are often referred to as allodynia or hyperalgesia.

Neuropathic Pain can be acute or chronic.

...if the pain is neuropathic, on a linked page we have given some details of some tools which can be helpful in assessing whether a patient's pain has a neuropathic component.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pain Service Website, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Webmaster Dr J G de Courcy, Consultant in Pain Medicine and Anaesthesia
email: pain.webmaster[at]glos.nhs.uk