Pain is one of the most often experienced subjective feelings of the human condition and is the most common health problem. Chronic pain has been considered to be an illness in its own right.

The World Pain Convention affirmed pain as a "human being's fifth indication of life," besides breath, pulse, body temperature and blood pressure.

The National Pain Diagnosis and Treatment Research Centre was established on Monday at the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital.

"Pain is good in the sense that it is a part of the body's alarm system," revealed Fan Bifa, deputy director at the centre and a specialist in pain relief. "People without a sense of pain cannot live for very long. But pain is not just a symptom, it can also be an illness in itself," he warned.

According to Fan, extreme pain can lead people to psychological breakdown or even to death.

Chronic pain occurs most often in old people, people living an irregular life, people whose work involves sitting for long periods of time, women during menstruation and in adolescence.

The most common pains include pain in the cervical vertebrae, shoulders, the lower back and the legs. Pain from the nerves between the ribs is also common. There is also pain caused by problems with the central nervous system, for example, the pain felt by people who have had a stroke and cannot move their legs.

In the West, the level of the diagnosis and treatment of pain is a standard to measure the qualification of a hospital. But in China, many hospitals do not have specialized departments for pain treatment. Patients with pain are separately treated in different departments.

Fan estimates that 15 per cent of all the patients who come to the hospital have symptoms of chronic pain. But only 2 per cent of these people attend a specialized pain clinic for treatment.

Statistics in the United States show that 30 per cent of adults suffer from chronic pain. Fan thinks the number can only be higher in China.

Actually 95 per cent of pain can be treated with a relatively satisfactory outcome, according to the doctor.

Treatment of patients with pain caused by arthritis in the knees or cancer has proved successful.

Fan calls a major treatment at his centre "minor wound nerve intervention." There is also electrical stimulation of the spinal cord and other Western surgical methods.

When it comes to a nerve pain, the doctor must first find out the condition of the nerve. If the nerve needs nutrition he will give medicines to nourish the nerves, or to diminish inflammation and kill pain.

If he finds the nerves are unable to function, he might consider cutting it off, otherwise the nerve might be conglutinated together and needs to be loosened up.

The clinic, headed by Han Jisheng, boasts more than 10 doctors and 30 to 40 beds.

(China Daily 10/13/2005 page8)