Does central sensitisation matter?

In my last post I discussed some of the mechanisms thought to be involved in central sensitisation, and while many of the details remain pretty unknown, I think the general conclusion is that yes, it really is a thing. What do I mean by central sensitisation? Well, it’s curious, it can refer to the processes at spinal and brain levels that seem to reduce the usual descending inhibitory mechanisms, expand the areas in which neural activity takes place, and allows increased information flow to eventually reach conscious awareness. At the same time it can refer to the experience in which a person feels greater pain than anticipated, given the degree of input; pain that is distributed more widely than anticipated, given the degree of input; and/or pain that lasts longer than we’d expect, given the degree of input (Woolf, 2011). BTW most of this post is derived from talks given by Pro Jo Nijs at the recent New Zealand Pain Society Conference. The question now is whether this really matters. After all, nociceptor inputs can trigger a prolonged but reversible increase in central nociceptive pathways – if they’re reversible, just eliminate the original nociceptive input, and voila! The sensitisation is gone. What we know, however, is that in many cases the tendency towards having long-term increased sensitivity remains, or was perhaps always present. Well, unfortunately if someone does tend to have greater activity in the central nervous system, then it has th...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Pain conditions Professional topics Research Science in practice biopsychosocial disability pain management Source Type: blogs