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    Is there an objective machine to measure how much pain an individual is experiencing? If not why not?

    There is a lot of arguments over the use of pain medicine, if there were an objective method of measuring how much pain an individual was experiencing it would solve a lot of problems.  Yet I have never heard of such a machine and usually when I go to the doctor they ask me to rate my pain on a scale from one to 5 or 10.  Anyone who is a reasonable actor could fake pain and get medicine such as Rush Limbaugh.  Because of people like him it is much more difficult for real pain suffers to get the medicine they need and Doctors become skeptics and tend not to believe anyone.  An objective machine that could measure how much pain an individual is experiencing would help a lot of people. 

    0  Views: 1175 Answers: 2 Posted: 13 years ago
    Tags: pain

    2 Answers

    People experience pain differently.  You could apply the same pressure to six different people and have six different reactions.   

    In one of my surgeries I had to have a spinal tap and the man in the booth next to me was crying and carrying on, and I thought this must be bad and is going to hurt. When they where done I ask is that all, he said yes, why, I said what did you do to that poor guy next door? He said the same thing, I felt very little pain.


    So some people are more sensitive or less tolerant.



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