Principios básicos del abordaje del dolor.

Abstract

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience, associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Worldwide, it is considered an important public health problem, being one of the main causes of medical attention in both public and private health centers, which leads to a significant decrease on the quality of life at work, social and economic level. Pain plays a biological role by acting as the body's defense mechanism. It is estimated that approximately 60% of the population has experienced pain at least once in their life. Pain can be categorized according to duration time as acute or chronic, pathophysiologically as nociceptive or neuropathic and by location as somatic or visceral. The neural process of pain is highly complex and will depend on each individual. For this process to take place, the participation of nocireceptors is essential, they are responsible for transmitting the painful stimulus to the spinal cord, then to the thalamus and finally to the central nervous system, specifically to the somatosensory cortex. There are four phenomena that participate in the nociceptive process which are: transduction, transmission, modulation and perception. For pain management there are different therapeutic options that can be divided into pharmacological and non-pharmacological. The most relevant non-pharmacological strategy is physiotherapy, while pharmacological measures are based on the OMS analgesic scale.