Many medical conditions or injuries can cause chronic pain.
Some people will continue to experience pain long after recovering from an initial injury, such as a back injury. Other chronic pain is caused by chronic diseases such as arthritis or cancer. Some people have pain that does not have an identifiable cause. This is not to say that the pain is not real. Whatever the cause, chronic pain is real and should be treated.
The following conditions may be associated with chronic pain:
- cancer
- pancreatitis
- fibromyalgia
- spinal injury
- headaches
- back injury
- arthritis
- nerve inflammation or damage
- juvenile idiopathic arthritis
- limb pain syndromes
- chronic headaches
- brachial plexus injury
- somatization disorder
Sometimes pain can be felt in a part of the body that is no longer there. This is called phantom limb pain, which develops as a result of amputation. When pain in one part of the body is felt in another part of the body, it is called referred pain.
The internal organs are not very responsive to pain; instead, pain in these areas may be felt more as a diffuse pain (i.e., pain spread over a large area), which is not easy to localize