Chronic pelvic pain has rarely been discussed in the pain management literature, although it is extremely common in general gynecological practice and often refractory to traditional medical and surgical therapy. A chronic pelvic pain program was developed to offer an alternative treatment approach for women for whom standard gynecological procedures were inappropriate or unsuccessful. Sixteen subjects completed the full 6-8 week interdisciplinary program, which included both somatic and behavioral therapies. Compared to a waiting list control the results showed a dramatic decrease in reported levels of pain following treatment. Anxiety and depression also decreased and psychosocial functioning improved, including return to work, increased social activities, and improved sexual activity. The outcome suggests that the interdisciplinary pain management approach is effective for the treatment of chronic pelvic pain.

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This paper presents a new approach to the measurement and understanding of clinical pain. A multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedure was used to analyze pairwise similarity judgments made to 9 pain descriptors by 24 cancer pain patients and 24 healthy volunteers. The question was whether the dimensions of the global pain space differed between the 2 groups. The Pain Intensity dimension was found to be primary for the patients, but much less important for the volunteers. Otherwise, the group stimulus space revealed broadly similar 3-dimensional solutions. The Pain Intensity dimension placed Mild Pain and Annoying at one pole and Intense and Unbearable Pain at the other. The Emotional Quality dimension grouped the descriptors Sickening and Miserable (and, in part, Intense Pain and Unbearable Pain) at the strong negative affect pole for both groups; they differed, however, with respect to the moderate affect pole. The Somatosensory dimension ranged from Burning to Cramping. The subject weight space revealed that the Pain Intensity dimension was the most important dimension for the patients, while Emotional Quality was more salient for the volunteers. Wide differences were found in the salience of the various dimensions to different individuals; this information may prove useful for tailoring patient treatment. The study demonstrates that MDS procedures such as INDSCAL, in which the subjects (rather than the researcher) determine the number and characteristics of the global pain dimensions, will improve our understanding and treatment of pain.

This review focuses on available anesthetic techniques for cancer patients, the indications, and appropriate agents for these potent tools in a stepwise approach to cancer pain. Anesthetic procedures are desirable when they will not compromise bodily functions important to the patient, and when tumor-directed therapy and noninvasive or less-invasive, low-risk approaches (primarily pharmacologic tailoring of analgesic drugs) fail to control pain. Nondestructive techniques include the epidural/intrathecal use of opioids via an implanted catheter, and local anesthetic blocks of nerves and sympathetic ganglia. Chronic intrathecal or epidural opioid infusion seems ideal if the life expectancy is 2 to 3 months. Local anesthetic blocks can help prognosticate results of subsequent neurolytic blocks, including undesirable effects. Destructive anesthetic procedures comprise injections of neurolytic agents (most commonly phenol or alcohol), and insertion of freezing probes, into nerves and ganglia. The types of nerve blocks performed, their complications, and success rates, and limitations of commonly used neurolytic agents as well as their proper applications, are described. The importance of proper patient selection and knowledge of the pathophysiology of the pain being treated is stressed, as is the appropriate timing of anesthetic procedures in the course of the disease.