[Benign chronic pain]

Recent data indicate that 25 to 30% of the population in industrialized countries suffers from benign chronic pain. Among these patients, 50 to 75% are professionally incapable for varied lengths of time, from a few days to some weeks or months, or even definitively. The aetiology and clinical presentation of chronic benign pain are enormously varied because this definition includes such different pathologies as headache, pain of rheumatologic, postsurgical, organic, and post-zoster origin, lombalgia, radiculalgia, post-amputation pain, neuropathologic pain, causalgia, algoneurodystrophic pain, psychosomatic and idiopathic pain. Since these syndromes and causes of pain could not be discussed individually, they have been grouped according to their neurophysiology and pathophysiology.