About Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is a debilitating disease which affects over 100 million Americans. It costs the United States in excess of half a trillion dollars each year and is the leading cause for why people are out of work.
In July 2020, the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) announced a revised definition of pain: "An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage." Pain is a subjective experience in which there is no method for determining if an individual is in pain. Every person experiences chronic pain in a different way which makes it difficult to treat. One of our primary goals is to understand the individual differences in each person’s pain so that we can ultimately tailor therapies to that person.
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Credit: Ming-Chih Kao, PhD, MD / Stanford Division of Pain Medicine