Chronic pain is increasingly common in health care.
It presents a serious management problem because people have come to expect a life that is pain free. In other words, we have become remarkably intolerant of any form of physical discomfort in modern life. Many hospitals now have Pain Clinics for managing people with various chronic pain syndromes. Chronic pain is different to acute pain. It has already been mentioned that chronic pain no longer serves a purpose of signaling harm or damage.