Pain Glossary A-L

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Acute Pain--Often short-lived with a specific cause and purpose; generally produces no persistent psychological reaction. Acute pain can occure during soft tissue injury, and with infection and inflammation. It can be modulated and removed by treating its cause and through combined stragegies using analgesics to treat the pain and antibiotics to treat the ifnection.

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Addiction--Psychological or emotional dependence on the effects of a drug.

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Algology--The science and study of pain phenomena.

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Allodynia--Pain that results from a non-injurious stimulus to the skin.

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Analgesia--Absence of pain in response to stimulation that would normally be painful. Healthcare professionals often use this term to mean hypoalgesia, a reduction in the intensity of pain that occurs in response to a normally painful stimulus.

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Analgesics--Medicines that are used to relieve pain.

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Anesthesia--Total or partial loss of sensation, especially tactile sensibility, induced by disease, injury, acupuncture or anesthetic.

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Anesthesiologist--Physician who specializes in giving drugs or other agents that prevent or relieve pain.

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Anesthesiology--The medical specialty concerned with the pharmacological, physological and clinical basis of anesthesia, including resuscitation, intensive respiratory care and pain management.

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Angina Pain--(tightness) in the chest area associated with cardiac disease.

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Anticonvulsant--A drug that prevents or relieves seizures.

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Anti-inflammatory--A drug that reduces inflammation and the redness, heat, swelling and increased blood flow found in infections and many chronic noninfective diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and gout.

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Anxiolytic--A drug that relieves anxiety and relaxes muscles.

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Arthralgia--Pain in a joint, usually due to arthritis or arthropathy, a disease or abnormality of a joint.

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Arthritis--Inflammation of a joint or joints resulting in pain and swelling. Also called articular rheumatism.

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Causalogia--A persistent, severe burning sensation of the skin, usually following injury to a peripheral nerve.

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Central Pain--Pain associated with a lesion of the central nervous system.

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Chronic Pain--Distinctly different from and more complex than acute pain. Chronic pain has no time limit, often has no apparent cause and serves no apparent biological purpose. Chronic pain can trigger multiple psychological problems that confound both patient and health care provider, leading to feeling of helplessness and hoplessness. The most common causes of chronic pain include low-bak pain, headache, recurrent facial pain, cancer pain and arthritis pain.

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Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS)--See Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy.

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Cordotomy--Surgery to cut some of the fibers of the spinal cord; used to relieve pain.

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Deafferentation--Pain due to loss of sensory input into the central nervous system.

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Distraction--A pain relief method that takes the attention away from the pain.

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Duration of Action--The length of time that the effect of a medicine lasts.

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Dysesthesia--An abnormal unpleasant sensation, whether spontaneous of evoked.

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Epidural--An injection into the spinal column but outside of the spinal cord.

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Failed Back Surgery--A descriptive (not diagnostic) term for the condition of a patient who has had several back surgeries: the patient could have as many as six to eight different pain pathologies producing the pain state.

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Headache--A pain in the head from any cause. Tension headaches and migraine headaches account for 90% for all headaches. A migraine is a complex of symptoms that presents clinically as discrete episoded of severe headache with associated features, such as phonophobia (abnormal sensitivity to sound), photophobia (abnormal sensitivity to light), nausea and emesis (vomiting)

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Herniated Disk--The protrusion of a degenerated or fragmented intervertebral disk that compresses a nerve root.

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Hyperesthesia--Increased sensitivity to stimulation, excluding special senses.

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Hyperpathia--A painful syndrome, characterized by increased reaction to a stimulus, especially a repetitive stimulus, as well as an increased threshold.

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Hypoesthesia--Diminished sensitivity to stimulation, excluding special senses.

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Imagery--A method of pain relief that uses mental images produced by memory or imagination.

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Infusion--A method of giving pain medication into a vein or under the skin; unlike an injection, which is pushed in by a syringe, an infusion flows in by gravity. Some continuous infusions are given using a mechanical pump.

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Interventional Pain Management--An effort to "intervene" in the body's production and or transmission of a pain signal to the brain. In most cases, this means identifying and treating the underlying cause of a particular pain or pain complex and by virtue of encouraging the healing process, the pain is subusequently reduced or resolved. Interventional pain management may involve an invasive procedure to treat and manage pain, typically provided through an injection of anesthetic, nerve block, spinal cord stimulation, implantation of a drug delivery system, or a neuroligical procedure.

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Local Anesthetic--A drugs that blocks nerve conduction in the region where it is applied.