Question

Mr. Aldredge, a 46-year-old building contractor, entered the hospital’s walk-in clinic with arm pain. He told the nurse on duty that lifting had always been part of his line of work. Although he was a supervisor in his job, he often helped with lifting heavy objects and would sometimes work alongside his crew to help meet a project deadline. For the last day on the job his left arm hurt intensely, and that is why he decided to come to the clinic to “set it right.” The nurse noticed Mr. Aldredge was substantially overweight and would sometimes pause for breath while describing his problem. The pain radiated all the way from his wrist up to his chest. Mr. Aldredge said he had never felt anything like it before. He said he had never had any heart problems—felt so healthy, in fact, that he hadn’t been to a doctor in years. He had even recently quit smoking. The nurse cut Mr. Aldredge’s examination short to have him transported to the emergency room for prompt evaluation and treatment of a probable myocardial infarction.

1. Give a brief overview of the different types of pain.

2. What type of pain did Mr. Aldredge have?

3. Give a possible explanation of why the body might misinterpret visceral impulses as somatic impulses.

Answer 1

1. DIFFERENT TYPES OF PAIN:-
(a)Acute pain:- pain which starts suddenly and is of short-term.
(b) Chronic pain:- pain which lasts for a longer period of duration.
(c) Intermittent pain:- pain which occur in between regular period.
(d) bone pain :- pain affecting bone.
(e) Soft tissue :- pain affecting organs or tissue.
(f) Referred pain:-pain from one part of your body is felt in another.
(g) phantom pain:- pain felt in a part of the body that has been removed.
(h) Migratory pain:-when pain stops and moves to a joint in another part of the body.
(i) Radiating pain:- pain perceived at a location other than the site of the painful stimulus.

2. Mr. Aldredge was suffering from visceral and referred pain.
-Visceral pain results from noxious stimuli to internal organs.
-Referred pain is when the pain is felt at locations distant from the origin of the pain.
-In this case the noxious stimuli is hypoxia to the heart muscle tissue.

3. A possible explanation for why the body might misinterpret visceral impulses as somatic impulseis because both pain signals enter the spinal cord at the same level.
-According to Johns” It is thought to be due to the convergence of visceral and somatic affect fibers on second-order spinothalamic tract neurons so the pain of visceral origin is perceived as somatic pain at the segmental level”.