ABSTRACT
Pain may also arise by abnormal activity generated within the nociceptive pathways without adequate stimulation of the peripheral sensory endings and offers no bene•t to the patient. For these clinical conditions, the term neuropathic pain has been introduced. The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) de•nes neuropathic pain as “pain initiated or caused by a primary lesion or dysfunction in the nervous system” (Merksey and Bogduk, 1994, 211). This de•nition has been criticized as lacking diagnostic speci•city and anatomic precision; hence, another de•nition has been proposed that refers to identi•able disease processes or identi•- able damage to the nervous system, namely: “pain arising as a direct consequence of a lesion or disease affecting the somatosensory system” (Treede et al., 2008, 1631).
