Pain Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Pain

An illustration of wrist pain
Symptoms	Unpleasant sensory and emotional sensations
Duration	Typically depends on the cause
Types	Physical, psychological, psychogenic
Medication	Analgesic

Pain is a distressing feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage."

Pain motivates organisms to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future. Most pain resolves once the noxious stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but it may persist despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body. Sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or disease.

Pain is the most common reason for physician consultation in most developed countries. It is a major symptom in many medical conditions, and can interfere with a person's quality of life and general functioning. People in pain experience impaired concentration, working memory, mental flexibility, problem solving and information processing speed, and are more likely to experience irritability, depression and anxiety.

Simple pain medications are useful in 20% to 70% of cases. Psychological factors such as social support, cognitive behavioral therapy, excitement, or distraction can affect pain's intensity or unpleasantness.

Etymology
Classification
- Chronic versus acute
Management
- Medication
Non-humans
See also

Etymology

First attested in English in 1297, the word peyn comes from the Old French peine, in turn from Latin poena meaning "punishment, penalty" (also meaning "torment, hardship, suffering" in Late Latin) and that from Greek ποινή (poine), generally meaning "price paid, penalty, punishment".

Classification

The International Association for the Study of Pain recommends using specific features to describe a patient's pain:

region of the body involved (e.g. abdomen, lower limbs),
system whose dysfunction may be causing the pain (e.g., nervous, gastrointestinal),
duration and pattern of occurrence,
intensity, and
cause

Chronic versus acute

Pain is usually transitory, lasting only until the noxious stimulus is removed or the underlying damage or pathology has healed, but some painful conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, peripheral neuropathy, cancer and idiopathic pain, may persist for years. Pain that lasts a long time is called "chronic" or "persistent", and pain that resolves quickly is called "acute". Traditionally, the distinction between acute and chronic pain has relied upon an arbitrary interval of time between onset and resolution; the two most commonly used markers being 3 months and 6 months since the onset of pain, though some theorists and researchers have placed the transition from acute to chronic pain at 12 months. Others apply "acute" to pain that lasts less than 30 days, "chronic" to pain of more than six months' duration, and "subacute" to pain that lasts from one to six months. A popular alternative definition of "chronic pain", involving no arbitrarily fixed duration, is "pain that extends beyond the expected period of healing". Chronic pain may be classified as "cancer-related" or "benign."

Management

Pain can be treated through a variety of methods. The most appropriate method depends upon the situation. Management of chronic pain can be difficult and may require the coordinated efforts of a pain management team, which typically includes medical practitioners, clinical pharmacists, clinical psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners.

Inadequate treatment of pain is widespread throughout surgical wards, intensive care units, and accident and emergency departments, in general practice, in the management of all forms of chronic pain including cancer pain, and in end of life care. This neglect extends to all ages, from newborns to medically frail elderly. In the US, African and Hispanic Americans are more likely than others to suffer unnecessarily while in the care of a physician; and women's pain is more likely to be undertreated than men's.

The International Association for the Study of Pain advocates that the relief of pain should be recognized as a human right, that chronic pain should be considered a disease in its own right, and that pain medicine should have the full status of a medical specialty. It is a specialty only in China and Australia at this time. Elsewhere, pain medicine is a subspecialty under disciplines such as anesthesiology, physiatry, neurology, palliative medicine and psychiatry. In 2011, Human Rights Watch alerted that tens of millions of people worldwide are still denied access to inexpensive medications for severe pain.

Medication

Acute pain is usually managed with medications such as analgesics and anesthetics. Caffeine when added to pain medications such as ibuprofen, may provide some additional benefit. Ketamine can be used instead of opioids for short-term pain.

Sugar (sucrose) when taken by mouth reduces pain in newborn babies undergoing some medical procedures (a lancing of the heel, venipuncture, and intramuscular injections). Sugar did not affect pain-related electrical activity in the brains of newborns one second after the heel lance procedure. Sweet liquid by mouth moderately reduces the rate and duration of crying caused by immunization injection in children between one and twelve months of age.

Non-humans

René Descartes argued that animals lack consciousness and therefore do not experience pain and suffering in the way that humans do. Bernard Rollin of Colorado State University, the principal author of two U.S. federal laws regulating pain relief for animals, wrote that researchers remained unsure into the 1980s as to whether animals experience pain, and that veterinarians trained in the U.S. before 1989 were simply taught to ignore animal pain. The ability of invertebrate species of animals, such as insects, to feel pain and suffering is unclear.

Specialists believe that all vertebrates can feel pain, and that certain invertebrates, like the octopus, may also. The presence of pain in animals is unknown, but can be inferred through physical and behavioral reactions, such as paw withdrawal from various noxious mechanical stimuli in rodents.

While plants, as living beings, can perceive and communicate physical stimuli and damage, they do not feel pain simply because of the lack of any pain receptors, nerves, or a brain, and, by extension, lack of consciousness. Many plants are known to perceive and respond to mechanical stimuli at a cellular level, and some plants such as the venus flytrap or touch-me-not, are known for their "obvious sensory abilities". Nevertheless, the plant kingdom as a whole do not feel pain notwithstanding their abilities to respond to sunlight, gravity, wind, and any external stimuli such as insect bites, since they lack any nervous system. The primary reason for this is that, unlike the members of the animal kingdom whose evolutionary successes and failures are shaped by suffering, the evolution of plants are simply shaped by life and death.

Pain facts for kids

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