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How a ‘pain-o-meter’ could improve treatments

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2024-11-08 17:30:08

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A participant holds his hand in a bucket of ice while Yingzi Lin monitors his pain response. Credit: Ruby Wallau/Northeastern Univ.

The graduate student bears down on my arm with a force akin to a firm handshake. This pressure might not seem like much, but when concentrated on a patch of skin roughly the size of a small coin, the sensation gradually starts to hurt.

As discomfort escalates to pain, a sensor strapped to my chest detects changes in my heart rate, breathing pattern, skin conductance and other bodily responses. These physiological signals are processed through advanced algorithms to generate a pain score. Displayed on a smartphone app, my pain level is 4.

Had you asked me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten, I would have had no idea how to convey my impressions accurately. Yet, this kind of deeply personal, highly variable and imprecise self-reporting is exactly what most clinicians rely on.

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