Chronic Pain

A condition in which an individual experiences pain which persists beyond the expected time required for healing of an injury or after the expected course of an acute illness, usually with a duration of greater than six months. Chronic pain arises from a number of causes including invasion or compression syndromes due to cancer, neurological disorders such as neuralgia, phantom limb pain, nerve entrapment syndromes, spinal cord damage, muscular inflammation syndromes, and syndromes involving lesions in the thalamus.