Acute pain is one-off pain, temporary, and often the result of injury or tissue damage. They usually have an identifiable cause, occur until the trigger is cured, and are localized.
In contrast, chronic pain has lost its warning function – the pain itself has become an illness and a permanent condition. Affected people not only suffer from the pain itself, but also from the fact that they seem powerless to deal with the pain despite all treatment attempts such chronic pain relievers that could be costly.
Talk to an expert with years of experience in the treatment of chronic pain. They can help you with an individual treatment plan to help you relieve your pain and reduce your physical and emotional impairments.
What is chronic pain?
One speaks of chronic pain when the symptoms last longer than three to six months, lead to physical (physical) restrictions and impair the condition, mood, and thinking (psycho-cognitive). Like acute pain, chronic pain can be due to disease or inflammation. In most cases, however, chronic pain syndrome is a much more complex disease.
If your pain is not directly related to a clear trigger, our pain therapy specialists will help you with treatment tailored to your pain disorder.
Accompanying symptoms of chronic pain
Everyone feels, evaluates, and processes pain differently. One reason for this could be that the pain-killing system is more active in some people and less active in others. Pain perception can also be affected by the way the brain processes pain.
In the case of acute pain, typical symptoms such as increased blood pressure, sweating or palpitations appear. In the case of chronic pain, however, these symptoms do not occur. On the other hand, the pain and the increasing physical limitations in everyday life, which result from the vicious circle of “pain – pain-related restriction of activity – even more pain” through inactivity, represent a great burden for patients and can lead to sleep disorders, depressive moods and feelings of anxiety as well as a reduced Ability to concentrate and resilience
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The majority of chronic pain patients, especially in the advanced stage, suffer from depressive moods and fears. In turn, anxiety and depression have been shown to increase the perception of pain itself. Taking this connection into account and breaking the vicious circle of pain disorders are central aspects of pain therapy.
A special form of chronic pain is fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), in which other symptoms such as exhaustion, concentration disorders and non-restorative sleep or sleep disorders occur. Fibromyalgia syndrome is also often associated with depression.
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Chronic pain treatment: Holistic approaches to pain relief
In the treatment of chronic pain, the combination of different procedures (multimodal therapy) has proven to be particularly promising for patients. Experts take into account physical, mental, emotional and social influences on your pain (biopsychosocial pain). A team of pain experts can draw up your individual treatment plan for interdisciplinary multimodal pain therapy (IMST), which will work together with you toward your personal therapy goal.
The goal is not only to provide patients with significant relief and symptom control but also to largely eliminate or compensate for the limitations caused by the pain. Experts also provide you with approaches to “helping you to help yourself”, with which you will learn to positively influence your pain actively and self-effectively and thus regain more quality of life, activity, and participation.