To see if there's an injury or identifiable condition causing your chronic pain, the doctor will need to run diagnostic tests. For the imaging tests (X-rays, MRIs), you may have to go to an imaging center to have these done; the results will be sent back to your doctor, who will interpret them for you.
How is chronic pain diagnosed? Pain is considered to be chronic if it lasts or comes and goes (recurs) for more than three months. Pain is usually a symptom, so your healthcare provider needs to determine what's causing your pain, if possible.
Making an accurate chronic pain diagnosis can be difficult. Multiple clinically relevant chronic pain types, with additional specific diagnoses, make it hard to determine the cause of a patient's chronic pain symptoms. In addition, different types of chronic pain share the same symptoms.
Blood tests can help identify a variety of chronic pain conditions, including specific types of arthritis. An infection, which can also cause a great deal of pain, can also be detected on a blood test. If pain is focused in a specific area of the back, a bone scan may be ordered.
There are many different kinds of pain scales, but a common one is a numerical scale from 0 to 10. Here, 0 means you have no pain; one to three means mild pain; four to seven is considered moderate pain; eight and above is severe pain.
Pain is, of course, the most subjective of all medical symptoms. There is currently no reliable and accurate method to objectively quantify the pain a patient is experiencing. One patient's “three” may well be another patient's “seven”.
The bottom line is that not all pain is able to be detected on an x-ray or MRI. That does not mean that there is nothing there that needs to be treated or diagnosed. In fact, it means that it is possibly a precursor to something going really wrong and then eventually needing surgery because it eventually winds up torn.
Why Are Chronic Pain Patients Misdiagnosed? A group of researchers from Johns Hopkins reported anywhere from 40% to 80% of those who suffer from chronic pain are misdiagnosed.
MRI is one of the most widely used modalities for the study of chronic pain.
If you are suffering from the effects of chronic pain you may qualify for disability benefits. In order to be eligible for SS disability benefits with chronic pain syndrome it must be expected to last for one year and you must have medical evidence.
There Is a Way Out
Experiencing depression, mood fluctuations, anxiety, altered perceptions and cognition, and emotional instability, are all commonly associated with chronic pain. This is a result of the perceived stress that impacts the body on a physical and chemical level.
But when it comes to claiming on insurance benefits held within your superannuation, often known as total and permanent disability (TPD), chronic pain can also be considered as a disability, particularly if it prevents you from returning back to work.
Fatigue is very common across many chronic pain conditions; as many as three out of every four patients with chronic pain report fatigue, as explained in this study.
MRI can describe nerve lesions in areas that are difficult to localize using electrodiagnostic studies8,19,20 or visualize using ultrasound. Depending on the specific clinical question, MRI or ultrasound can be a peripheral nerve imaging modality of choice.
US is used to detect early signs of inflammation within the soft tissue. MRI allows to assess the soft tissue and bone marrow involvement in case of inflammation and/or infection. MRI is capable of detecting more inflammatory lesions and erosions than US, X-ray, or CT.
Does an MRI scan show nerve damage? A neurological examination can diagnose nerve damage, but an MRI scan can pinpoint it. It's crucial to get tested if symptoms worsen to avoid any permanent nerve damage.
Trigeminal neuralgia or tic douloureux is a chronic pain condition that affects the trigeminal or fifth cranial nerve. It is one of the most painful conditions known.
Your First Thought
Simultaneously, if none of the regular pain medications or remedies are helping, the ER might be the best place to get help. If you are experiencing new symptoms like fever and nausea, or if you are unable to cope with the physical and emotional pain, it makes sense to go to an emergency room.
Self-report is the most reliable source of information on pain.
Average daily pain score (ADPS) is a participant-reported instrument that measures pain intensity using an 11-point numeric rating scale (NRS) where 0 is defined as no pain and 10 is defined as worst possible pain.
It's hard to do anything at all. 9 = Pain that is very hard to tolerate. You can't carry on a conversation. 10 = Worst pain possible.
Patients should be asked to describe their pain in terms of the following characteristics: location, radiation, mode of onset, character, temporal pattern, exacerbating and relieving factors, and intensity.