Measuring and defining pain

MEASURING AND DEFINING PAIN
The words we use in describing pain are important as a measure of severity and terms having an emotional content may be among the most important. One of the factors shown up in multiple studies carried out in pain clinics is that, while diagnostic interviews are important, they may be misleading. This is because the sufferer may deny anxiety and/or depression, insisting that these emotional disorders would clear up if only the pain went. However, since it may not be possible to eliminate the pain, treatment should always attempt to treat the anxiety and depression which is increasing the pain's severity. The adjectives used to describe pain may help to formulate a diagnosis. Pain from nerve damage or irritation is often described as 'shooting', 'jabbing' or 'lightning-like'.
Some conditions, such as causalgia, present as burning pain and are often treated with ice-massage using ice cubes to locally massage the pain area or at specific pain control points on the body.
Vascular pains differ from throbbing with the dilatation or opening of the blood vessels, to cramping with constriction or closing down of the muscular walls of the blood vessels. Muscular pains are usually aching and made worse by resting and sharp movement. Pain can be constant or intermittent over seconds, minutes, days or even months, and can be produced by such things as the position of your arms and legs and the activities of daily living such as housework or gardening.
Constant headaches are often of the muscular contraction type.
Vascular headaches tend to be periodic.
Visceral pains relating to disorders of the organs of the chest, or abdomen, frequently share both a steady and an intermittent component. For example, the pain associated with kidney infection can be described as a 'constant pain' compared with occasional sharp bursts of pain.
It is important to know whether pain has a diurnal variation; that is, whether the pain varies from morning to night. Also, it is significant to know how sufferers medicate themselves to treat the fluctuations in pain. One of the major problems for the practitioner dealing with pain is to determine its intensity. This applies to both the diagnostic tests and to the assessment of treatment successes.
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Pain
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