Analgesia - Methods and Protocols

Abstract

Even if pain is the one of the most common human experience, it is still difficult to describe it accurately and this fact represents a major challenge for researchers and clinicians. The IASP (International Association for the Study of Pain) defines pain as “unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”, emphasizing at the same time its emotional aspect and the fact that in many case it is difficult to demonstrate a reliable damage. Nevertheless, as prof. Szallasi underlined in his introduction, pain, and especially chronic pain, still remains undertreated even though it is affecting even more people than that entailed by pain’s description: this fact has important social and economical implications.......