Taking the Guesswork Out of Pain Management

How do you measure pain? A patient’s furrowed brow, a child’s cries or tears—all are signs of pain. But what if the patient suffers from severe dementia and can’t describe what she is feeling or is a young child who can’t yet talk? Caregivers can help read the signs of pain, but their interpretations may differ greatly from patient to patient, because people have different ways of showing discomfort. And when the patient is unconscious, such as during surgery or while in intensive care, the caregiving team has even fewer ways to measure pain. Patients can point to one of the faces on this subjective pain scale to show caregivers the level of pain they are experiencing. Credit: Wong-Baker Faces Foundation. Assessing pain is an inexact science. It includes both subjective and objective measures. A patient might be asked during a subjective assessment (performed, perhaps, with a caregiver showing a pain-rating scale such as the one in the figure), “How much pain are you feeling today?” That feedback is coupled with biological markers such as an increased heart rate, dilated pupils, sweating, and inflammation as well as blood tests to monitor high levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Combined, these measurements can give doctors a fairly clear picture of how much pain a patient feels. But imagine if members of the surgical or caregiving team could actually “see” how the patient is feeling? Such insight would let them select better drugs to use during and af...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Pharmacology Anesthesiology Medicines Pain Source Type: blogs