Is there a difference in terms of treatment and approach to treating chronic pain as opposed to acute pain?
Well, let’s just say that there should be a difference although many therapists treat chronic pain as an acute pain that has been around for a while. I think this is flaw in our approach. There are fundamental differences between acute and chronic pains and there are physiological differences that occur in the body when a pain has persisted for a long time. The toolbox of techniques that we have for the acute pains is actually quite large and quite effective and when we try to use that same toolbox for chronic pain we may run into trouble because it doesn’t seem to be as effective. We need to use a different set of tools for chronic pain.
