The Characteristics of Acute Pain and Tissue Damage

When a pain goes from being short-term to chronic, it can become difficult for the person experiencing the feeling to know the difference. After all, certain tissues can take days, weeks or months to heal fully, especially tendons and ligaments that do not receive a lot of circulation to begin with. So knowing the characteristics of acute pain is helpful for anyone who has sustained an injury and is worried that the pain may be lasting for far too long and developing into a chronic syndrome.

With an acute injury, there are often the signs of damage to the tissues. These include swelling as more nutrients and inflammatory chemicals are delivered to the injured site, redness as blood vessels open more fully to increase circulation, and a feeling of heat in the injured spot, also due to the increased delivery of hot blood. These are the body's main responses to tissue damage, and they are used to isolate the injury and begin healing it as quickly as possible.

The most important factor to keep in mind with acute pain and inflammation is that they are associated with actual tissue damage. People typically experience all of these symptoms of swelling, redness, and heat at the site of an injury when there is actual damage to the tissues in that area. And pressing on the inflamed body part or rubbing the site of the damage can cause flare ups in the level of pain. This all would indicate an acute injury, rather than chronic pain.

With acute pain, there is also usually a pattern with the feelings of pain and stiffness in the affected body part. The stiffness is often at its worst at night before bed and in the morning after rising. This happens because the circulation of fluids and nutrients throughout the night can cause the viscosity of certain tissues to increase, making them harder. Increased pain and stiffness in the morning is one main factor of lower back pain due to the increased fluid in the discs.

A final sign of acute injury is that anti-inflammatory medications and over-the-counter drugs help to reduce the pain and swelling. These substances decrease the involvement of certain pro-inflammatory compounds that circulate to the injured area with acute tissue damage. Taking the anti-inflammation drugs helps by reducing these pain-producing compounds and, for most people, the pain is more bearable in the short term. Chronic pain, on the other hand, frequently does not respond to medications such as these.

Tissues can take a varying amount of time to repair fully, and they never really regenerate. The tissues will always be slightly different from what they were before the injury occurred. But most tissue damage is acute, and the pain will go away on its own over a few days, weeks, or months, depending on what has been injured and how badly. If an injury is still painful after the normal time that the tissues should have healed, then the risk of developing a chronic pain syndrome begin to rise.