Pain Treatment Improved in Recent Years

25 August 2012

How Pain Treatment Has Improved

BOB DOUGHTY: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I’m Bob Doughty.

STEVE EMBER: And I’m Steve Ember. Today we tell about developments in pain control.

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BOB DOUGHTY: As recently as the nineteen seventies, little research existed about a subject that interests most people at some time. The subject is pain.

Over the years, however, medical studies have led to new hope for patients who are hurting. And, an international movement known as hospice has helped bring attention to difficult-to-treat pain for the dying.

STEVE EMBER: Doctors speak of three kinds of pain: acute, chronic and breakthrough. Acute and chronic pain can be mild or severe. Acute pain happens fast and usually lasts a short time. It generally reacts to treatment.

But chronic pain can last a long time. Chronic pain may go away, but it often comes back. It can be hard to treat.

Breakthrough pain is a pain that strikes suddenly. It may end just as suddenly. An activity can cause breakthrough pain. It also may happen as the effects of a person’s last medicine are ending.

BOB DOUGHTY: Many different diseases, conditions and injuries can cause chronic pain, from back problems to burns. Cancer is one of those causes, whether from the disease itself or from its treatment.