fMRI: A Method for Measuring Chronic Pain

Most of us have some familiarity with the idea that pain is usually something that is self reported; health care providers may ask a patient to rate the discomfort on a scale of 1 to 10, use the smiley face pain index, or some similar scale to gauge how comfortable or uncomfortable a patient may feel.

The trouble is, this is all subjective. There is no way to actually measure the pain.

A few years ago, there was a research paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine about measuring chronic pain. The method that was discussed is something new and interesting, and really does attempt to measure pain in an objective way. The study authors used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to identify a "pain signature" within the patients brain. Most of the study is too technical for the purposes of this blog...but the exciting thing is that confirmation of a patient's self report of pain could actually exist in the future of medicine!

My thoughts on this:

1) In time medical science will be able to use this method to confirm the presence of chronic pain using this technique.

2) The technique may actually be refined over time , possibly could pinpoint the source of the pain based on the pain signature--making it easier to treat/eliminate the source of pain.

3) The technique may help to differentiate pain subtypes and which therapies are most appropriate based on subtype.

Sources: Wagerlab.Colorado.edu; blogger.com;wikimedia

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