Journal of Gender-Specific Medicine Gender Differences in Pain Sensitivity and Responses to Analgesia Gender Differences in Pain Sensitivity and Responses to Analgesia Lena S. Sun, MD Variations in pain sensitivity between men and women have been reported in numerous studies.
Women have more severe and longer lasting pain than men.
The goal of this review is to summarize the current state of knowledge with respect to the sexual dimorphism of surgical pain and its management. 1-3 Much of this information, however, has not yet been directly applied in a clinically relevant manner for the treatment of pain during the perioperative period. Gender variations in postoperative pain intensity have not been studied in detail, and the limited available data have been inconsistent. No study has examined gender as a variable while controlling for other confounders, such as age, surgical procedure, and preexisting disease. 6 Many epidemiologic studies have demonstrated that women suffer more often than men from several clinical conditions that cause discomfort, including migraine and nonmigraine headaches, facial and oral pain, back pain, and musculoskeletal pain.