Wednesday, January 03, 2018

Chronic Pain

The Chronification of Pain
When physical agony persists without an evident cause, the culprit may be how the sufferer’s brain is wired

By  on 

Earlier this year, I wrote about my patient, Andrew, an engineer who developed a heroin habit. An unfortunate series of joint replacements had left Andrew with terrible pain and, when his medication ran out, he turned to heroin.
Months after his surgeries—after his tissue and scars had healed—Andrew remained disabled by a deep, biting pain. I recall puzzling over his pain, how it had spread throughout his body and how previous clinical teams had prescribed progressively higher doses of opioids to tame it. /.../

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