Articles: Pain and Suffering
Pain and Suffering Quick Updates
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
worsened by history of sexual trauma
Women with undiagnosed posttraumatic
stress disorder frequently go to primary care providers
for treatment. The most common cause of PTSD in women is
sexual trauma. A person’s vulnerability to develop
PSTD is linked to that individual’s history of victimization.
Reports estimate that 15%-38% of women experience childhood
sexual abuse, 13% to 20% experience adult rape and at least
20% experience battering.
Butterfield, M. and Becker, M. Posttraumatic stress disorder
in women: assessment and treatment in primary care, Primary
Care: Clinics in Office Practice, Vol. 29, No. 1, March
2002
Blindness is feared
Although any injury is stressful,
eye trauma, among non-life threatening injuries, is especially
so. Vision loss caused by trauma is usually sudden, dramatic,
and can be emotionally wrenching for patients who have taken
their vision for granted. According to
Gallup polls, blindness is the most
feared by Americans of all disabilities, ranking fourth
after AIDs, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease as the
worst disease or ailment.
Morris, R., Fletcher, D., and Scott, S. Counseling and rehabilitation,
Ophthalmology Clinics of North America, Vol. 15, No. 2,
June 2002
Why adhesions are painful
Peritoneal (intra-abdominal)
adhesions are implicated in the cause of chronic abdominopelvic
pain. Many patients are relieved of their symptoms after
the adhesions are cut. Adhesions are thought to cause pain
indirectly by restricting organ motion, thus stretching
and pulling smooth muscles of adjacent organs or the abdominal
wall. In this study, nerve fibers were present in all of
the peritoneal adhesions that were examined. This study
provided the first direct evidence for the presence of sensory
nerve fibers in human peritoneal adhesions, suggesting that
these structures may be capable of conducting pain after
appropriate stimulation.
Sulaiman, H. et al, Presence and distribution of sensory nerve
fibers in human peritoneal adhesions, Annuals of Surgery,
Vol. 234, No. 2, August 2001
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