Abstract
The Journal of the Ceylon College of Physicians (JCCP) is a peer-reviewed, open access journal published bi-annually by the Ceylon College of Physicians (CCP) in the last week of June and December.The objective of the Journal is to promote good clinical practice and influence policy making across the medical world through publication of original research and peer reviewed articles on current issues and to foster responsible and balanced debate on issues that affect medicine and health care in Sri Lanka. Contributions to the JCCP reflect its national and multidisciplinary readership and include current thinking across a range of medical specialties.
Highlights
Pain is an unpleasant physical and emotional sensation due to actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage
Due to a paucity of data on the prevalence of chronic pain in Sri Lanka, we aimed to carry out a demographic survey through a point prevalence study of pain related complaints among general medical outpatient clinic attendees of a Provincial General Hospital
The predominant systems affected among patients were of the ‘nervous system’ and ‘musculo-skeletal’ systems, as determined by trained junior doctors who followed a structured evaluation of clinical history and case notes
Summary
Pain is an unpleasant physical and emotional sensation due to actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage. Acute pain is a symptom of an underlying disease. When it becomes chronic, and exceeds three months duration due to certain reversible and irreversible changes in the nervous system, it becomes a disease by itself. Most chronic pains are secondarily neuropathic due to the above-mentioned changes, which are collectively called sensitization.[1,3]. Chronic pain is a disease by itself It should be recognized as a non-communicable disease (NCD). It has been more recently hypothesized that chronic pains and other NCDs are closely linked through a pathological process called metaflammation. Metaflammation has been linked to the occurrence of atherosclerotic diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), Alzheimer’s disease, inflammatory bowel disease and some neuropathic pains which are interlinked.[4,7]
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