IEEE Pulse. 2022 Mar-Apr;13(2):11-15. doi: 10.1109/MPULS.2022.3159065.
For the one in five adults who suffer from chronic pain, treatment largely relies on pharmaceuticals, which can come with serious downsides [1]. "They mitigate pain, but in the long term lead to such significant side effects and consequences that the burden from the treatment many times starts to exceed the burden from disease, and it attacks the person's quality of life," says Padma Gulur, M.D., professor of anesthesiology and head of the Pain Relief and Opioid Mitigation Innovation Science (PROMIS) Laboratory, Duke University (Figure 1).
对于五分之一患有慢性疼痛的成年人来说，治疗主要依赖于药物，而这些药物可能会带来严重的副作用。“它们可以缓解疼痛，但从长远来看，会导致严重的副作用和后果，以至于治疗带来的负担有时开始超过疾病本身带来的负担，而且还会影响到患者的生活质量，”杜克大学麻醉学教授兼疼痛缓解和阿片类药物缓解创新科学（PROMIS）实验室主任 Padma Gulur 医学博士说（图 1）。
