Management of Chronic Pain for Patients With Breast Cancer Essay

Management of Chronic Pain for Patients With Breast Cancer - Essay ExampleThe International connector for the Study of Pain defines it as An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or strength tissue damage or described in terms of such damage. Subjectively it could denote any(prenominal) form of unpleasant sensation with varying degrees of warmth. Pain is distinguished based on two canonical types identified as acute and chronic. Acute pain results from a disease process whereby there is upheaval or injury to tissues occurring rather suddenly after trauma or surgery and may be accompanied by anxiety or emotional distress. Usu all in ally certain medications serve to diminish the intensity level of Acute Pain. Chronic Pain however, persists over a longer period than acute pain and is liberal to most medical treatments. Several factors may serve to heighten its perception and frequency thereby create discomfort to patients in varying degrees.Pain fo llows a certain train of events before it is detected and announced by a patient. Luckmann and Sorensen traced it to the nerve receptors, named as nociceptors which differs from the complex receptors of vision and other senses. These nociceptors are simply unaffectionate nerve endings in almost all types of tissues which react to change and require a high level of stimulation to elicit a response. However once their threshold is exceeded they communicate the presence of the painful stimulus. At times they become so over sensitized that long after the stimulus is removed, pain nonetheless persists. Once these nociceptors are stimulated, they discharge an impulse that travels in the form of an electrical activity to the spinal stack and on to the brain. The spinal cord is informed on the activity of the body through nerve fibers carrying somatosensory information. The spinothalamic tract then carries the painful information to the brain via the thalamus by passing through the somat osensory cortex which serves to localize and identify the quality of pain before it is diffused to the many areas of the brain including the reticular formation, medulla, hypothalamus and limbic structures. As a response, the brain sends to the receptors a complex response to the painful stimuli. It dictates the receptors to identify the degree, the character and intensity of the pain its location and how to behave to reduce or avoid it in the future.Pain can be inhibited if its pathways are blocked, as presented in the Gate-Control Theory of Melzack and Wall. The gate in their report is controlled by a dynamic function of cells that can facilitate or inhibit the transmitting of pain signals. The fibers manner of speaking pain information from the tissues are found in layers known as laminae. A certain Laminae II which is different from the rest of the layers and also called the Substantia Gelatinosa(SG) is proposed as the location of the gate. This serves as the convergence poin t of all pain information, whether stimulus coming in from the tissues or identification from the brain. A spinal cord transmission cell also known as the t-cell either opens the gate thereby facilitating pain transmission or closing the gate. A variety of sources may close or open the gate but tho the brain can manipulate the gate to inhibit or