Dolor perdurable II. Tratamiento / [Enduring pain II. Treatment].

Pain disorders present highly challenging therapeutic problems, owing in part to complex co-morbidities associated with pain disorders, notably including psychiatric disorders characterized by depressed mood or anxiety. Many treatments are employed to treat pain-disorder patients, and most are unsatisfactory. Virtually all analgesic medicines in long-term use provide only partial efficacy and present substantial risks of adverse effects, loss of benefit over time, or dependency and risk of abuse. Commonly employed drugs with analgesic properties include non-opioids (mainly nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents [NSAIDs] or acetaminophen), many natural or synthetic opioids (including opiates and phenylpiperidines), some antidepressants (especially those with noradrenergic activity), a few anticonvulsants, skeletal muscle relaxants or topical remedies, and a growing variety of experimental treatments. The major overlap between pain and psychiatric disorders, as well as the currently unsatisfactory state of treatments available for chronic pain syndromes, encourage a comprehensive approach to assessment and clinical management of patients with chronic pain. Many current treatment programs for pain disorder patients offer narrowly specialized and incomplete treatment options. Ideally however, such care should be provided by multi-disciplinary teams with expertise in neurology, general medicine, pain management, physical medicine and rehabilitation, as well as psychiatry. Psychiatrists as well as pain specialists can serve an essential role in leading comprehensive assessment and general management of such complex and challenging patients who are typically only partially responsive to available treatments.

Dolor perdurable I. Nosología y epidemiología / [Enduring pain I. Nosology and epidemiology].

Pain disorders are extraordinarily prevalent throughout clinical medicine, and are highly co-morbid with various psychiatric disorders, particularly those including depression or anxiety. Assessment of such patients tends to be based on diagnostic criteria that may not reflect the complexity of the clinical problem and can result in prioritizing somatic aspects of painful syndromes at the expense of psychiatric aspects or, conversely, over-emphasize psychiatric aspects. In the first part of this overview we consider current nosological perspectives and their potential clinical consequences, epidemiological data that underscore the association of comorbid painful and affective or anxious syndromes, and consider the importance of psychiatric assessment and treatment of such patients. The major overlap between pain disorders and psychiatric disorders, as well as the unsatisfactory state of treatments available for chronic pain syndromes, encourage a comprehensive approach to assessing and clinically managing patients with chronic pain. Many programs for pain disorder patients offer narrowly specialized treatment options. To be preferred are multi-disciplinary teams with expertise in internal medicine, neurology, pain management, and rehabilitation, as well as psychology and psychiatry. In the second part of this overview, we propose that psychiatrists can serve a key role in leading comprehensive assessment and management of complex and challenging pain-psychiatric patients who are typically only partially responsive to available treatments.