What is chronic pain
Chronic pain is the sensation of discomfort that lasts more than six months and unresponsive to conventional therapies for their control, such as surgery, medication, rest, physical therapy or other means. When it reaches this stage we can consider that the pain has ceased to be a sign to become a disease.
It should be mentioned that some authors report that chronic pain is one that lasts more than three months or beyond the normal period of recovery.
Chronic pain is an entity that according to estimates in the United States affects half of the population present in some parts of the body. In Mexico it is believed that the figure may be the same. Chronic pain can last for years and causes severe damage to the quality of life of the person and although many diseases cause pain for the organ damage that affect chronic pain syndrome has no identifiable physical cause and this is stated with such when the patient is subjected to tests of all types and apparently there is a cause that justifies it.
There are two types of chronic pain: Not malignant Chronic Pain and malignant chronic pain
Chronic nonmalignant pain
Is one that is a person whose condition does not compromise survival in the short to medium term. It can be classified as:
- Rheumatoid.
- Neuropathic. It is usually secondary to acute injury, its most important features are the location in the territory of one or more nerves, burning or itching and is often accompanied by painless paresthesias, hyperalgesia and allodynia.
- Vascular. Associated with an alteration of blood flow through vessel obstructive disease or spastic.
- Trauma. Its origin is mechanical.
- Pain Disorder, a psychiatric illness.
Malignant chronic pain
It is common in tumors and bone metastases. May be due to malignancy, antineoplastic therapy or other causes:
- Pain caused by the tumor. It is due to infiltration or compression on certain structures (bones, plexus, roots, peripheral nerves, viscera).
- Pain caused as a result of therapy (post-surgery, post-chemotherapy, after radiotherapy).
- Pain unrelated to cancer.
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