Pain medicine: general view to the problem

The explosive growth of our knowledge of every aspect of pain in recent years has produced major advances in the classification and management of the varieties of pain. However, despite of advancing knowledge in the field of pain medicine for last decades, the burden of pain remains unacceptably high. Epidemiological studies point to the high prevalence of chronic pain across the world associated with staggering socioeconomic costs. Unfortunately, existing therapies fail to offer good pain relief to the majority of these patients. There have been some modest advances with the approval of some new therapies, but nevertheless pain medicine is still waiting to find out new initiatives and approaches that serve to a better understanding of pain mechanisms leading to effective therapies

Thermal and mechanical sensory and pain testing in healthy students

Several lines of clinical and experimental investigations of a wide variety of painful conditions have suggested ethnic and gender differences in pain perception. In this study we report some findings of cold and heat sensations, thermal pain thresholds, mechanical pressure thresholds and pressure pain thresholds in healthy student volunteers. We did not find any statistical significant differences in thermal assessment. However, we revealed gender differences on the mechanical pressure sensation threshold and the mechanical pressure pain threshold. Our study confirmed significant variability across trials and individuals, which appeared greater at lower heat and mechanical pressure intensities. Additional studies and collecting more data are needed to determine ethnic and gender differences between groups