TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of pain on survival
AU - Staats, Peter S.
PY - 2003/12
Y1 - 2003/12
N2 - For patients suffering various diseases, increased pain hastens death by interfering with life-enhancing activities; if it hurts to eat, patients won't eat; if it hurts to move, they won't move. But survival simply cannot be enhanced by reducing pain because, even as some pain treatments have a beneficial effect on disease (spinal cord stimulation on coronary artery disease, for example), other pain treatments can have an adverse effect on survival. Thus, we must continue to investigate pain and its treatment even as we use the best possible techniques available to treat pain as aggressively as we would any other disease.
AB - For patients suffering various diseases, increased pain hastens death by interfering with life-enhancing activities; if it hurts to eat, patients won't eat; if it hurts to move, they won't move. But survival simply cannot be enhanced by reducing pain because, even as some pain treatments have a beneficial effect on disease (spinal cord stimulation on coronary artery disease, for example), other pain treatments can have an adverse effect on survival. Thus, we must continue to investigate pain and its treatment even as we use the best possible techniques available to treat pain as aggressively as we would any other disease.
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U2 - 10.1016/S0889-8537(03)00086-5
DO - 10.1016/S0889-8537(03)00086-5
M3 - Review article
C2 - 14719723
AN - SCOPUS:0346102486
SN - 0889-8537
VL - 21
SP - 825
EP - 833
JO - Anesthesiology Clinics of North America
JF - Anesthesiology Clinics of North America
IS - 4
ER -