ISSN: 2041-6792

Clinical Investigation

Pain Mechanism Scientific Journals

The most widely accepted and current definition of pain, established by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), is "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience related to acutal or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of tissue damage, or both." Although several theoretical frameworks are proposed to elucidate the physiological basis of pain, not one theory has been ready to exclusively incorporate everything of all the aspects of pain perception. The four most influential theories of pain perception include Specificity, Intensity, Pattern AND circuit Control theories of pain. However, in 1968, Melzack and Casey described pain as multi-dimensional, where the sizes aren’t independent, but rather interactive. The dimensions include sensory-discriminative, affective-motivational and cognitive-evaluate components. Determining the foremost plausible pain mechanism(s) is crucial during clinical assessments as this will function a guide to work out the foremost appropriate treatment(s) for a patient. Therefore, criteria upon which clinicians may base their decisions for appropriate classifications have been established through an expert consensus-derived list of clinical indicators. The tables below were adapted from Smart et al. (2010) that classified pain mechanisms as 'nociceptive', 'peripheral neuropathic' and 'central' and outlined both subjective and objective clinical indicators for every . Therefore, these tables function an adjunct to any current knowledge and supply as an overview which will guide clinical decision-making when determining the foremost appropriate mechanism(s) of pain.    

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