Question

Your written assignment for this module is a worksheet that describes the following: The differences between acute and chronic pain Reasons that a patient would experience acute versus chronic pain and patient presentation examples of each. You should be using complete sentences to answer the questions. Ensure that you are using correct grammar. In addition, support your answers using your textbook, course materials, credible internet resources, and scholarly journals. All citations must be in APA format. Please click here to download the Differences between Acute and Chronic Pain Worksheet. Submit your completed assignment by following the directions linked below

Answer 1

ACUTE PAIN VS CHRONIC PAIN
After acute pain goes away, a person can go on with life as usual. Chronic pain is pain that is ongoing and usually lasts longer than six months. This type of pain can continue even after the injury or illness that caused it has healed or gone away.
Acute pain usually comes on suddenly and is caused by something specific. It is sharp in quality. Acute pain usually does not last longer than six months. It goes away when there is no longer an underlying cause for the pain. Causes of acute pain include:
Surgery
Broken bones
Dental work
Burns or cuts
Labor and childbirth
After acute pain goes away, a person can go on with life as usual.
Chronic pain is pain that is ongoing and usually lasts longer than six months. This type of pain can continue even after the injury or illness that caused it has healed or gone away. Pain signals remain active in the nervous system for weeks, months, or years. Some people suffer chronic pain even when there is no past injury or apparent body damage. Chronic pain is linked to conditions including:
Headache
Arthritis
Cancer
Nerve pain
Back pain
Fibromyalgia pain
People who have chronic pain can have physical effects that are stressful on the body. These include tense muscles, limited ability to move around, a lack of energy, and appetite changes. Emotional effects of chronic pain include depression, anger, anxiety, and fear of re-injury. Such a fear might limit a person's ability to return to their regular work or leisure activities.
Acute and chronic pain are different clinical entities. Acute pain is provoked by a specific disease or injury, serves a useful biologic purpose, is associated with skeletal muscle spasm and sympathetic nervous system activation, and is self-limited. Chronic pain, in contrast, may be considered a disease state. It is pain that outlasts the normal time of healing, if associated with a disease or injury. Chronic pain may arise from psychological states, serves no biologic purpose, and has no recognizable end-point. Both acute and chronic pain are an enormous problem in the United States, costing 650 million lost workdays and $65 billion a year. The therapy of acute pain is aimed at treating the underlying cause and interrupting the nociceptive signals. The therapy of chronic pain must rely on a multidisciplinary approach and should involve more than one therapeutic modality.