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British Journal of Anaesthesia 2005 94(2):146-149; doi:10.1093/bja/aei017
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© The Board of Management and Trustees of the British Journal of Anaesthesia 2005

Editorial II: What use is pain?

T. P. Nash

Department of Pain Medicine, Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Liverpool L9 7LJ, UK

E-mail: tim.nash@thewaltoncentre.nhs.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Ask any medical student, trainee anaesthetist, or patient ‘what use is pain?’ and they will tell you it is protective, or it is a warning. The view that it is protective has puzzled me for some considerable time. As anaesthetists, we spend entire careers trying to control pain, enabling early mobilization to reduce the complications from surgery. In this evidence-based era, the claim that pain is protective needs to be substantiated. Even the IASP definition of pain does not address this issue, considering pain to be an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.1 In no way does it suggest that pain has a use or is protective. It appears that at best it informs that something biologically harmful is happening to our bodies.2 So where has the view that pain is protective come from?

The development of . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Br J AnaesthHome page
H. F. Galley
Volume 100: Editorials: What's in a name?
Br. J. Anaesth., February 1, 2008; 100(2): 151 - 153.
[Full Text] [PDF]

E-letters:

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What pain is for.
David W. Yates
British Journal of Anaesthesia, 6 Feb 2005 [Full text]
Pain has NO use
Nicholas B Scott
British Journal of Anaesthesia, 14 Apr 2005 [Full text]