Treatment Issue Addressed: Chronic Pain Issues

Acute pain is experienced when the nervous system alerts the injured person, through the physical sensation of pain, that a physical injury has happened. This is so that the injured individual can take action to relieve the pain. This type of pain is associated with tissue damage, inflammation, or a disease process such as infection. Regardless of the intensity of the pain, it is relatively brief, lasting hours, days or weeks.

Chronic pain lasts for a longer period of time such as months, years, or permanently. It may be accompanied by a disease process such as rheumatoid arthritis or it may be associated with an injury that is not resolved within an expected period of time such as low back pain or phantom limb pain. The main difference between acute pain and chronic pain is that chronic pain is not a warning that an injury has taken place. Instead, pain signals just keep firing in the nervous system.

Chronic pain is complex because cultural background, past life experiences, the personal meaning of the pain, personality factors and attention or arousal level all affect how a person experiences the pain. Ten people may have the same physical condition but each person experiences the physical pain differently and to a different degree.