In an editorial published in the journal, Pain Practice, authors David Niv, M.D. and Marshall Devor, PhD outline the major arguments in support of this categorization. Niv and Devor were also the original authors of the essay that evolved into the EFIC declaration.
One point in support of this view calls attention to the definition of disease in the Oxford English dictionary: "a bodily condition in which functions are disturbed or deranged," accurately describing chronic pain. Additional points argue that chronic pain can persist long after its usefulness as an initial "alarm" to the body has ended, and even after damaged tissue has healed or a precipitating disease has been cured, proving it much more than just a symptom.
Data further emphasize the financial implications of pain as overall costs are comparable to those of cancer and heart disease.
Efforts need to be devoted to "increasing the attention devoted to the problem by healthcare professions, including increased awareness and use of existing pain relief modalities, increased training in the management of chronic pain, and increased research efforts toward the discovery of novel treatments," state the authors.
While there has been some initial resistance to the idea of this classification, the idea is catching on. The article points out that chronic pain is "clearly a very widespread condition as several recent studies revealed that 50% of adults surveyed suffer from one or more types of pain or discomfort at any given point in time" and "although few people die of pain, many die in pain and even more live in pain."
EFIC's Declaration reads: "Pain is a major healthcare problem inEurope. Although acute pain may reasonably be considered a symptom of disease or injury, chronic and recurrent pain is a specific healthcare problem, a disease in its own right."
This study is published in Pain Practice. Media wishing to receive a PDF of the article contact medicalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net.
About the Authors
David Niv, M.D., is director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Pain Medicine and Pain Research Laboratory at the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel. He is current President of the World Institute of Pain and Chairman of the EFIC Committee on Public Awareness.
Marshall Devor, Ph.D., is a Laboratory Head and Chairman of the Department of Cell and Animal Biology at the Institute of Life Sciences and past Director of the Center for Pain Research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His laboratory has published extensively in the pain field, with work of a notably integrative nature involving neurophyssiology, neuroanatomy (light and EM), genetics and animal behavior. More information on this topic can be found at www.EFIC.org.
About Pain Practice
Pain Practice, the official journal of World Institute of Pain, publishes international multidisciplinary articles on pain that provide its readership with up-to-date knowledge of the research, evaluation methods, and techniques of pain management. The present literature on pain medicine is diverse and published in a variety of basic and clinical specialty journals. For a practitioner to subscribe to all the venues needed to cover the field of pain medicine would be impractical, if not impossible. Likewise, the literature search can be cumbersome, costly, and entirely unavailable in some areas. As a thorough, multidisciplinary journal, Pain Practice is a convenient, cost-effective way to resolve these dilemmas. Published on behalf of the World Institute of Pain. For more information on membership, please visit www.wipain.org.
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Pain Practice