Pain measurement: a formidable task.
Pain is defined as unpleasant sensory and emotional experience, associated with actual or impending tissue damage. It consists of multi-dimentional phenomenon having sensory discriminative, cognitive-evaluative and effective motivational components. Though the technology has advanced, still it is very difficult to objectively assess all the attributes of pain, including alteration in cognitive behaviour. However, subjective methods like Visual Analog Scale rating (VAS) and preliminary objective methods like pain evoked responses, behaviral monitoring and event related evoked potentials for cognition are currently in vogue. It will take some more time and effort to evolve yet other newer and sophisticated techniques to measure all aspects of pain in human beings.
Kumar
Sanjay
S
University College of Medical Sciences, Shahdara, Delhi-110 095.
Tandon
O P
OP
Mathur
R
R
D000818:Animals; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D010147:Pain Measurement / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods* / Q000523:psychology*