Measuring pain and analgesic response.

Pain is a complex phenomenon, defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. This definition is widely accepted and has led to many advances in pain medicine, but it has shortcomings and has been challenged. The definition of pain underlies the complexity of its measurement. Pain is individual and subjective, modulated by physiological, psychological and environmental factors such as previous events, culture, prognosis, coping strategies, fear and anxiety. Multiple attempts to quantify and analyse the pain experience have been published, with most based on self-reporting. Self-report measures have weaknesses and may be influenced by mood, sleep disturbance and medication. Attempting to ‘objectify the subjective’ can be hazardous because of response biases, situational influences and the context in which pain is reported.

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