Week 1: Comfort-Pain Flashcards
Explain acute pain.
It is pain that lasts through the recovery period of up to 6 months.
What 4 things are involved in the pain process?
- Transduction
- Transmission
- Perception
- Pain Modulation
Pain Process
Which 4 substances are involved in the transduction phase? Explain each of them.
- Bradykinins: powerful vasodilator that increases permeability, constricts smooth muscle, and triggers histamine release.
- Prostaglandins : send additional pain stimuli to the CNS.
- Substance P: neuropeptide that makes nerves feel pain and increases rate at which nerves fire.
- Serotonin: a hormone that can act to stimulate smooth muscles, stop gastric secretion, and produce vasconstriction.
Pain Process
Which two fibers are involved in the transmission phase?
- Afferent Fibers: carries impulses from the pain receptors toward the brain.
- Efferent Fibers: carries information away from the CNS to the body.
Pain Process
Describe the perception of pain and the pain threshold.
- Perception: sensory process that occurs when a stimulus for pain is present.
2.Pain Threshold: minimum intensity of a stimulus that is seen as painful.
Pain Process
Describe the 3 things involved in Pain Modulation.
- Endogenous Opioid Compounds: are neuromodulators, naturally present, morphine-like regulators in the spinal cord and brain.
- Endorphins: produced at neural synapses, powerful pain-blocking chemicals that produce euphoria.
- Enkephalins: neurotransmitter, produces even more powerful effect than endorphins.
Explain the Gate Control Theory in simple terms.
- Stimulation of small diameter fibers sense pain and cause the gates to open up.
- Stimulation of large diameter fibers such as heat, cold, mechanical, and pressure causes the gates to close.
- Amount of activation in the small fibers versus the large fibers controls the overall perception of pain.
Gate Control Theory is the basis for cold therapy, massage, distraction, and TENS therapies.
Which system is pain triggered by?
Parasympathetic Nervous System
What are nociceptors?
They send signals along sensory neurons to the spinal cord and then to the brain for translation.
The brain will send the signal back down motor neurons to the site of pain causing the body to respond to pain.
What are the 6 categories of pain stimuli? Give examples in each category.
- Biological: bacteria, viruses (flu, pneumonia)
- Chemical: smoke, cleaning solution (smoke inhalation from fires- fireman)
- Electrical: electrical burns (finger in the socket- children are at risk)
- Thermal: heat, cold (frostbite)
- Mechanical: fractures, shearing forces, bending (trauma, surgery)
- Cellular: hypoxia is the most common cause (MI, sickle-cell disease)
Describe Nociceptive Pain
Pain is from uninjured, fully functional nervous system, this is normal pain.
Describe Neuropathic Pain
Pain from nerve malfunction or injuries from trauma, disease, chemicals, and infections. This is abnormal.
Describe Acute Pain
- Sudden onset
- Results from an identifiable source
- Duration is short-lived only until injury is healed
Describe Chronic Pain
Pain that is maladaptive lasting more than 3 months.
Describe Intractable Pain
Pain that is resistant to therapy
Describe Phantom Pain
Results from pain after an amputation that feels as though the limb is still there and hurts.
Describe Cutaneous Pain
- Superficial
- Involves skin or subcutaneous tissues
Describe Somatic Pain
- Deeper
- Tendons, ligaments, joints, bones, blood vessels, nerves