Acupuncture: Chinese practice of inserting needles into the skin at specific points of the body to relieve pain.

Acute Pain : Often short-live with a specific cause and purpose; generally produces no persistent psychological reaction. Acute pain can occur during soft tissue injury, and with infection and inflammation. It can be relieved by treating its cause and through combined use of analgesics to treat the pain and antibiotics to treat the infection.

Addiction: Psychological or emotional dependence on the effects of a drug.

Algology: The science and study of pain phenomena.

Analgesia: Absence of pain in response to stimulation that would normally be painful. Healthcare professionals often use this term to mean hypoalgesia, a reduction in the intensity of pain that occurs in response to a normally painful stimulus.

Analgesics: Medicines used to relieve pain.

Anesthesia: Total or partial loss of sensation, especially tactile sensibility, induced by disease, injury, acupuncture or anesthetic.

Anesthesiologist: Physician who specializes in giving drugs or other agents that prevent or relieve pain.

Anesthesiology: The medical specialty concerned with the pharmacological, physiological and clinical basis of anesthesia, including resuscitation, intensive respiratory care and pain management.

Angina Pectoris: A recurring pain or discomfort in the chest that happens when some part of the heart does not receive enough blood. It is a common symptom of coronary heart disease (CHD), which occurs when vessels that carry blood to the heart become narrowed and blocked due to atherosclerosis. It is usually relieved within a few minutes by resting or by taking prescribed angina medicine.

Anticonvulsant: A drug used to prevent or relieves seizures.

Antidepressant: A drug used to prevent or treat depression.

Anti-inflammatory: A drug that reduces inflammation and the redness, heat, swelling and increased blood flow found in infections and many chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and gout.

Anxiolytic or (anti-anxiety): A drug whose most common use and intended therapeutic effect is to control or prevent anxiety.

Arthralgia: Pain in a joint, usually due to arthritis or arthropathy, a disease or abnormality of a joint.

Arthritis: Pain, inflammation, and stiffness in a joint or joints. The two most common forms are osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis.

Causalogia: A persistent, severe burning sensation of the skin, usually following injury to a peripheral nerve.

Central Pain: Pain associated with a lesion of the central nervous system.

Chemotherapy: Treatment with anticancer medications.

Chronic Pain: Distinctly different from and more complex than acute pain. Pain that continues a month or more beyond the usual recovery period for an illness or injury or pain that goes on over months or years as a result of a chronic condition. It may be continuous or come and go.

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome: Also known as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD), is a chronic pain disorder involving the sympathetic nervous system. It usually is the result of an injury or trauma, but can also be a complication of surgery, infection, casting or splinting and myocardial infraction (heart attack).

Cordotomy: Surgery to cut some of the fibers of the spinal cord in order to relieve pain.

Deafferentation: Pain due to loss of sensory input into the central nervous system.

Distraction: A pain relief method that involves taking the attention away from the pain.

Duration of Action: The length of time that the effect of a medicine lasts.

Dysesthesia: An abnormal and unpleasant sensation that is either spontaneous or evoked.

Epidural Injection: The administration of medication into the epidural space, (into the spinal column but outside of the spinal cord). It is used to treat swelling, pain, and inflammation associated with neurological conditions that affect nerve roots, such as a herniated disk and radiculopathy.

Failed Back Surgery Syndrome: Is seen in 10-40 percent of patients who undergo back surgery. It is characterized by intractable pain and varying degrees of functional incapacitation occurring after spine surgery.

Headache: A pain in the head from any cause. Tension headaches and migraine headaches account for 90% for all headaches. A migraine is a complex of symptoms that presents clinically as episodes of severe headache with associated features, such as photophobia (abnormal sensitivity to light), nausea and emesis.

Herniated Disk: The protrusion of the jelly-like substance in the center of an disk. If the substance pokes out far enough to irritate a nerve, it can cause pain in your back, leg or both. Though it can follow a single, traumatic event, disk herniation is usually the result of a gradual, age-related, degenerative process. Herniated disks are most common in the lumbar spine.

Hyperalgesia: Extreme sensitivity to pain.

Hyperesthesia: Increased sensitivity to stimulation.

Hyperpathia: A painful syndrome, characterized by increased reaction to a stimulus, especially a repetitive stimulus, as well as an increased threshold.

Hypoalgesia: Diminished sensitivity to pain.

Hypoesthesia: Diminished sensitivity to stimulation, excluding special senses.

Imagery: A method of pain control that uses mental images produced by memory or imagination.

IV Infusion: Administration of (pain) medication directly into the bloodstream via a vein.

Interventional Pain Management: An effort to "intervene" in the body's production and or transmission of a pain signal to the brain. In most cases, this means identifying and treating the underlying cause of a particular pain or pain complex and by virtue of encouraging the healing process, the pain is subusequently reduced or resolved.

Local Anesthetic: A drug that blocks nerve conduction in the region where it is applied.

Metastasis: The spread of cancer from one part of the body to another.

Morphine: A bitter crystalline alkaloid extracted from opium, the soluble salts of which are used in medicine as an alalgesic a light anesthetic, or a sedative.

Musculoskeletal Pain: Pain originating within the musculoskeletal system, such as pain from arthritic conditions, painful muscle condition, broken bones, torn ligaments and tendons and pain of spinal disc origin.

MRI: An imaging technique based on a computer analysis of the response of atoms of hydrogen, phosphorous or other elements to a generated magnetic field and radio signal: used to produced electronic images of specific atoms and molecular structures in solids, especially human cells, tissues and organs.

Narcotic Analgesic: Pain relieving drug related in action and structure to the opiates.

Nerve Block: Pain relief method in which an anesthetic is injected into a nerve.

Neuralgia: Severe sharp pain along the course of a nerve.

Neuritis: Inflammation of a nerve or group of nerves that is characterized by pain, loss of reflexes and atrophy of the affected muscles.

Neuroblative Therapy: The use of various injectable substances such as alcohol and phenol or the use of controlled heat or cold to render the nervous system unable to transmit a pain signal.

Neuropathic Pain: Any pain originating from the central nervous system, especially pain affecting the cranial or spinal nerves.

Neuropathy: A disturbance of function or pathologic changes in a nerve: in one nerve, mononeurphathy: in several nerves, mononeuropathy multiplex: if summetrical and bilateral, polyneuropathy.

Nociceptor: A sensory receptor that responds to pain.

Onset of Action: Length of time it takes for a medicine to start to work.

Opiate: Narcotic pain-relieving drug chemically related to Opium.

Osteoarthritis: A form of arthritis characterized by chronic degeneration of the cartilage of the joints.

Pain Management: In cases where the pain pathology has no ability to heal despite medical or surgical therapy, treatment takes on the form of "pain management" which seeks to reduce symptoms.

Pain Threshold: The least experience of pain that a subject can recognize.

Pain Tolerance Level: The greatest level of pain that a subject is able to tolerate.

Paresthesia: An abnormal burning or prickling sensation which is generally felt in the hands, arms, legs, or feet, but may occur in any part of the body. The sensation, which arises spontaneously without apparent stimulus and is usually not painful, may also be described as tingling or numbness, skin crawling, buzzing, or itching.

Physical Therapy: The health profession that treats pain in muscles, nerves, joints, and bones with exercise, electrical stimulation, hydrotherapy and the use of massage, heat and cold.

Radiculalgia: Pain along the distribution of one or more sensory nerve roots.

Radiculitis: Inflammation of one or more nerve roots.

Radiculopathy: A disturbance of function or pathologic change in one or more nerve roots.

Referred Pain: Pain that is felt in a part of the body at a distance from its area of origin.

Regional Anesthesia: Blocking the nerve supply to part of the body, such as an arm, so the patient cannot feel pain in that area.

Relaxation Therapy: Methods used to lessen tension, reduce anxiety and thereby reduce pain.

Rheumatism: Any of several pathological conditions of the muscles, tendons, joints, bones, or nerves, characterized by discomfort and disability. [Example= Rheumatoid Arthritis].

Rhizotomy: Surgical severance of spinal nerve roots to relieve pain or hypertension.

Side Effect: A peripheral or secondary effect, especially an undesirable secondary effect of a drug or therapy.

Somatosensory: Sensory signals from all tissues of the body including skin, viscera, muscles, and joints.

Stage: The extent of a disease's progression.

Subcutaneous: Under the skin.

Tolerance: Decreasing effect of a drug with the same dose or the need to increase the dose to maintain the same effect.

Tranquilizer: Any of various drugs used to reduce tension or anxiety; an antianxiety agent.

Trigger Point: A hypersensitive area or site in muscle or connective tissue at which touch or pressure will elicit pain.

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