What is Chronic Pain?
Chronic pain is pain that lasts for longer than 12 weeks despite medication or treatment. Sometimes this is due an ongoing cause like osteoarthritis. But with many chronic pains, the injury or illness that started it is long gone. This tells us that chronic pain often involves an over-sensitisation of the pain system and that it can be the pain system itself that is the problem.
Chronic Pain is recognised as a Long Term Condition in its own right. Pain related conditions have a bigger impact on quality of life than all other chronic conditions (Sprangers et al. J Clin Epidemiol 2000 53: 895-907).