A Five-Dimensional View of Pain | Pain Research Forum

Leaders of a major effort to systematically classify all common chronic pain conditions expect to have the first stage completed by mid-July 2014. The Pain Taxonomy, a project of the ACTTION public-private partnership, and the American Pain Society is one of two independent initiatives launched last spring to fill a widely perceived need for an updated evidence-based approach to improve diagnosis, treatment, and research of chronic pain (seePRF related news story). Key issues and decisions of the initial consensus meeting held in May 2013 are summed up in the March 2014 issue of The Journal of Pain. The paper also describes the organizing principles, structured framework, and working outline for the final product. "We had a lot of discussion about how revolutionary to be," said Roger Fillingim, director of the University of Florida Pain Research and Intervention Center of Excellence in Gainesville, US, and co-chair of the taxonomy initiative. In the end, the group decided the field lacked sufficient ammunition in the form of evidence to completely overthrow the prevailing diagnostic approach based on body location, affected tissues, and associated disease states. "There was a lot of interest from virtually all the workgroup members in moving more toward a mechanism-based system," Fillingim said. "But we all recognize that existing knowledge doesn't support it. We don't know enough about the mechanisms underlying pain conditions and symptoms to have that as the ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs