TY - JOUR PY - 2002// TI - Emotional instability due to personality impairment is reflected in the intensity of central pain JO - Pain Clinic A1 - Yanagida, H. A1 - Arakawa, K. A1 - Sakai, K. A1 - Sadohara, Y. SP - 263 EP - 268 VL - 14 IS - 3 N2 - 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

LA - en SN - 0169-1112 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156856902320761496 ID - ref1 ER -