Handbook of Pain and Aging

From time to time, professional journals and edited volumes devote some of their pages to considerations of pain and aging as they occur among the aged in different cultures and populations. One starts from several reasonable assumptions, among them that aging per se is not a disease process, yet the risk and frequency of disease processes increase with ongoing years. The physical body's functioning and ability to restore all forms of damage and insult slow down, the immune system becomes compromised, and the slow-growing pathologies reach their critical mass in the later years. The psychological body also becomes weaker, with unfulfilled promises and expectations, and with tragedies that visit individuals and families, and the prospect that whatever worlds remain to be conquered will most certainly not be met with success in the rapidly passing days and years that can only culminate in death. Despair and depression coupled with infirmity and sensory and! or motor inefficiency aggravate both the threshold and the tolerance for discomfort and synergistically collaborate to perpetuate a vicious cycle in which the one may mask the other. Although the clinician is armed with the latest advances in medicine and phar macology, significant improvement continues to elude her or him. The geriatric specialist, all too familiar with such realities, usually can offer little else than a hortative to "learn to live with it," but the powers and effectiveness of learning itself have declined.

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This comprehensive text examines the physical and mental repercussions of pain among the elderly, finding theoretical bases in such fields as dynamic psychology, psychophysics, behavior modification, pharmacology, and nutrition. The book covers the basic topics of biobehaviorism, psychosocial and psychodynamic aspects, and clinical techniques as they pertain to treatment of elderly patients. The authors of the book's 17 chapters are all esteemed specialists on particular aspects of pain and aging, and all provide state-of-the-science solutions to quality-of-life problems associated with the elderly.

Contenu
I. Biobehavioral Issues in Geriatric Pain.- 1. The Psychology of Pain and Suffering.- 2. A Brief History of Pain Perception and Pain Tolerance in Aging.- 3. Chronic Morbidity and Disability in the U.S. Elderly Populations: Recent Trends and Population Implications.- 4. The Assessment of Pain in the Elderly.- 5. Nutrition, Disability, and Health in the Older Population.- 6. Managing Pain in the Institutionalized Elderly: The Nursing Role.- II. Psychosocial and Psychodynamic Aspects.- 7. Rehabilitating the Elderly in Return to Work.- 8. Coping with Pain in Old Age.- 9. The Role of Pain in the Cascade from Chronic Illness to Social Disability and Psychological Distress in Late Life.- 10. Pain and Psychological Function in Late Life.- 11. Hypnosis and Pain Relief for Older Persons.- III. Clinical Management and Techniques.- 12. Management of Chronic, Nonmalignant Pain in the Elderly: Experience in an Outpatient Setting.- 13. Cancer Pain in the Elderly.- 14. Pain in Osteoporosis and Paget's Disease in the Elderly.- 15. Oral Facial Pain in the Elderly.- 16. Exercise in Aging and Pain Control.- 17. Behavioral Treatments for Pain Experienced by Older Adults.