Letter: Find the cause of pain

From L. S. Illis

You report Beverly Collett and Irene Tracey as calling for pain to be treated as a disease (6 March, p 6). This would be a terrible, retrograde step.

I retired in 1995 after 15 years running a clinic treating patients with intractable neurological pain. It was fascinating. All the patients – and I do mean all – had previously had their pain “treated” by other doctors who had not first made a diagnosis of its cause.

Patients with intractable pain invariably suspect that something nasty is eating away inside them. Imagine the effect that this, combined with the pain itself, would have.

We took a comprehensive history, and after appropriate investigations gave a detailed explanation of the cause of the pain. Even when treatment was not successful in altering the experience of the pain, patients stated that knowing its cause enabled them to relegate it to a minor aspect of their life, instead of dominating it.

Lymington, Hampshire, UK