Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast. My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about pain.

Then you can find written notes on this topic at zero to finals.com slash pain or in the neurology section of the second edition of the zero to finals medicine book.

And you can find flashcards and questions to train your knowledge

and help you remember the information longer at members.0 to finals.com.

So let's get straight into it.

The International Association for the Study of Pain publishes a definition of

pain, and this is from 2020. Pain is an unpleasant, sensory and emotional experience associated with

or resembling that associated with actual or potential tissue damage.

It's essential to distinguish between two categories of pain,

acute pain which has a new onset or chronic pain

where the pain has been present for three months or more.

This distinction between acute and chronic pain helps to guide management.

Let's talk about the basic physiology of pain.

There are two aspects to the experience of pain.

The sensory aspect, which is the sensory signal transmitted from the pain receptor,

and you can think of this as a patient saying it's a sharp sensation like a needle, or it's a dull sensation like an ache, and the affective

aspect of pain, and this is the unpleasant emotional reaction to the pain, And you can think of this as a patient saying,

it's excruciating, I can't bear it.

Pain is supposed to indicate underlying or potential damage to the tissues,

but it can occur without tissue damage.

The physiology of pain is very complex. There's still a lot that's not fully understood

about the experience of pain. Pain is subjective, meaning that when a person indicates they're in pain,

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