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Last updated: Mon, Oct 21, 2024
What's in a name? After all, a rose is a rose. You can perhaps imagine that if as children we'd learned a different name for the flower, it wouldn't much change the world. With use, however, the labels that we use for things develop meanings and associations. In the case of "chronic pain," a term of art in the medical world, the label is used to designate a medical syndrome, and you find it defined and explained in some detail in medical textbooks.
If you examine discussions or definitions of "chronic pain" in these texts, you find that there is some ambiguity and contradiction in the explanations and in the uses of the term. I want to begin by re-looking at some of the definitions of the term "chronic." Comparison of the definitions and usages of the term indicate that the definition has fuzzy boundaries, and that precise definitions don't well cover the range of phenomena that it is appied to.
Nevertheless, the term is useful in medical communication. Doctors know pretty much what they mean when they use the term. The fuzziness of the term as it is used reflects uncertainty in understanding precisely what it is that connects the various syndromes to which it is applied. Contrast the fuzzines of this term to the scientific standard, the precisely defined operational definition. (See Operational Definitions.)
What about "pain?" We've seen that the IASP has put forward a definition of pain that is widely used without comment in the same medical books that discuss chronic pain. (Pain Definitions.)
The IASP adopted their definition of the term "pain" for their purposes and with their understandings, whatever those may have been when they adopted it. It's not a profitless exercise to examine whether that definition fits well with what we know today about the various phenomena that "pain" sufferers experience and "pain" care providers seek to treat. After all, decades of highly-sophisticated research have been done since that definition was offered.
My basic criticism of the IASP definition will be that it lumps together more than one physiological and neurological process, while the differences between those processes deserve explicit attention.
Within this section...
What is "Chronic" Pain? (Last updated: Mon, Oct 21, 2024)
What is Chronic "Pain"? (Last updated: Mon, Oct 21, 2024)
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Varieties of Chronic Pain (Last updated: Mon, Oct 21, 2024)