Definitions and Epidemiology

Pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage. Pain is always subjective.” (International Association for the Study of Pain).

Whereas acute pain is not primarily due to psychopathology or environmental influences, in chronic pain these influences play a prominent role. John Bonica, a pioneer in pain medicine, believed that chronic pain is pain persisting “a month beyond the usual course of a disease or a reasonable time for an injury to heal or associated with a chronic pathological process …” The term “chronic pain syndrome” was introduced in the 1970s to describe cases of intractable pain complaints out of proportion to the objective findings, with significant psychological overlay.

Paresthesia

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