Citation

Yanagida H, Arakawa K, Sakai K, Sadohara Y. Pain Clinic 2002; 14(3): 263-268.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002)

DOI

10.1163/156856902320761496

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A 32-year-old woman, who was by nature emotionally unstable, suffered from pain due to spinal cord injury after attempting suicide by jumping from a building. She experienced mild pain almost constantly and suffered paroxysmal severe pain intermittently. The patient recorded her own pain intensity on a visual analog scale 700 times, i.e. 7 times/day for 100 days. The frequency of recorded pain was as follows: no pain 36 times (5.1%), mild pain 608 times (86.9%), moderate pain 18 times (2.6%), and severe pain 38 times (5.4%). The paroxysmal exacerbations of pain were reported 56 times during the 700 pain recordings. The exacerbating factors included: an emotionally unstable situation 44 times (78.5%), fatigue 4 times (7.2%), somatic stimuli twice (3.6%), and unknown reasons 6 times (10.7%). These data clearly show that the emotional instability of this patient has a direct effect on her pain score over time. In order to define the exacerbating factor(s) of pain, we believe that systematic recording of pain intensity over several months is essential.

Language: en

Keywords

adult; article; case report; Central pain; clinical feature; disease exacerbation; disease severity; Emotional instability; emotional stress; Exacerbating factor; fatigue; female; human; mental instability; pain; pain assessment; Pain score; personality disorder; Personality impairment; risk factor; scoring system; spinal cord injury; Spinal cord injury; suicide attempt; symptom; Variant pain intensity; visual analog scale