Understanding Neuropathic Pain

Pain is usually the natural consequence of tissue injury resulting in approximately forty million medical appointments per year. In general, as the healing process commences, the pain and tenderness associated with the injury will resolve. Unfortunately some individuals experience pain without an obvious injury or suffer protracted pain that persists for months or years after the initial insult. This pain condition is usually neuropathic in nature and accounts for a large number of patients presenting to pain clinics with chronic, non–malignant pain. Rather than the nervous system functioning properly to sound an alarm regarding tissue injury, in neuropathic pain the peripheral or central nervous systems are malfunctioning and become the cause of the pain.