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Pain

Clinical pain assessment: from bedside to better treatment

Successfully treating chronic pain is challenging, as patients respond heterogeneously to analgesic treatments. Such variation in response can be attributed to differing underlying pain-generating mechanisms. A novel clinical bedside test that identifies distinct pain phenotypes might help deliver more-effective mechanism-based treatment strategies.

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Correspondence to Gunnar Wasner.

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Competing interests

G. Wasner has acted as a consultant for Amgen and has received honoraria for speaking from Grünenthal, Medtronic, Mundipharma, and Pfizer Pharma. R. Baron has acted as a consultant or on the speaker's bureau for Allergan, Eisai, Genzyme, Grünenthal, Medtronic, Mundipharma, Pfizer Pharma, Sanofi Pasteur, and Schwarz. He has also received grants or research support from Genzyme, Grünenthal, and Pfizer Pharma.

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Wasner, G., Baron, R. Clinical pain assessment: from bedside to better treatment. Nat Rev Neurol 5, 359–361 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2009.93

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