ABSTRACT
Introduction The last few years have represented an incredibly exciting period for pain research in general and paediatric pain research in particular. Major advances have occurred in the understanding of pain, and in the development and re¢nement of pain measures, as well as in the use of e¡ective pain control methods. An adequate review of each of these developments is beyond the scope of this book. Instead, this and subsequent chapters will provide a brief overview of the state of the art with regard to pain in children,1.1 with the emphasis on procedure-related cancer pain. In this chapter the physiological and the cognitive models of pain will be described in detail and the implications of this conceptualisation of pain for pain assessment and management will be explored.
