The clinical significance of pain threshold measurements.

Abstract

Pain is an experience common to us all. There are various methods of attempting to measure pain in an individual. Pain threshold would appear to be the most useful of these as it is atraumatic and repeatable over long periods in healthy individuals. Various factors affect pain threshold such as anxiety. There are a number of ways of measuring pain threshold the requirement for these being similar, for example producing no tissue damage. Pain threshold appears to change in various clinical conditions such as osteoarthrosis of the hip once the painful condition is relieved the threshold may revert back to normal. Other painful conditions such as rheumatiod arthritis do not appear to alter the pain threshold. Pain threshold does not appear to be altered by analgesic drugs, however other drugs may alter the pain threshold.