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25: Pain Management in Persons With Spinal Cord Injury

DOI:

10.1891/9780826137753.0025

Authors

  • Bryce, Thomas N.

Abstract

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage that four out of every five people with spinal cord injury (SCI) report as an ongoing problem. Most pains after SCI can be classified into one of two broad subtypes: nociceptive pain which is pain arising from the activation of peripheral nerve sensory receptors capable of transducing and encoding noxious stimuli, and neuropathic pain which is pain caused by a lesion or disease of the somatosensory nervous system. Ongoing pain may have an enormous emotional, physical, and social impact on a person's daily life. Numerous psychosocial factors and conditions have been associated with both pain-related distress and pain-related functional disability after SCI. This chapter discusses assessment of pain and relates psychological factors. It describes the types of pain such as musculoskeletal pain, visceral pain, other nociceptive pain and other neuropathic pain along with their treatment.