Via practica 10/2007

PAIN IN NEUROLOGICAL DISEASES AND GENERAL PRACTITIONER

Pain is one of the most common symptoms in general practice. Different interpretation of symptoms by patients is a source of mistakes in diagnosis and therapy of painful diseases. In neurological practice we often see patients with neuropathic pain, headache and chronic pain. Neuropathic pain is characterised as pain in primary damage or dysfunction of peripheral or central nervous system. The most common neurological causes of neuropathic pain are sciatica, diabetic neuropathy or post herpetic neuropathy. Therapy of neuropathic pain differs from those of somatic pain. Anticonvulsants, antidepressants and analgesics are usually used. Sciatica are the common cause of chronic pain too. Diagnosis and therapy of chronic pain is complex. Aetiology of headache includes a broad spectrum of diseases, but only few of them are life threatening. In diagnostic workup of those aetiologies we can use some special characteristics of headache.

Keywords: neuropathic pain, chronic pain, headache.