Department of Veterinary Medicine
Università degli Studi di Perugia

Adequate pain control should be one of the main objectives of the veterinary practitioner, aiming at improving the quality of life, response to therapy and survival time of their patients; despite this, in Italy, some relatively recent studies have shown that analgesics are still poorly used in general veterinary practice, especially with certain species. The reduced use of analgesic protocols by veterinarians is attributable to the lack of a thorough knowledge about the neurophysiology of pain, the latter clinical consequences, and the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodinamic characteristics of analgesics, as well as the fear of potential side effects of these drugs, the limited number of available and recorded molecules as analgesics, and most importantly the difficulty of recognizing the presence of painful states and the determination of its intensity in non verbalizing individuals. Currently, a universally recognized system does not exist for assessing pain in animals. Various strategies have been proposed both experimentally and in the clinical practice in an attempt to identify objective measures that can assess acute and chronic pain in dogs and cats. The latter include; observation and recording of physiological, neuroendocrine, metabolic and locomotor responses to pain. However, these measures alone are not good indicators of a painful condition as they are influenced by many factors concomitant to pain. An alternative/complementary approach for the assessment of pain in animals is the use of pain scales, especially multiparametric scales which take into account the effects of verbal and physical interactions between the animal, the observer and the surrounding environment, possibly accompanying an assessment of the physiological changes taking place. Unfortunately, even the latter presents several shortcomings. Primarily, the execution of pain therapy in veterinary medicine is limited due to the lack of a unique and universal diagnostic method capable of assessing pain in animals, and thus the resulting difficulties in recognizing and quantifying the presence and classifying the origin of pain (as patients are non verbalizing unlike in the human medicine field, especially in those cases of persistent or neuropathic pain, in which causes are difficult to pinpoint). The degree of difficulty in recognizing the presence of pain makes it very complicated to perform a pathogenetic diagnosis and the further application of specific treatment protocols which are appropriate to the type of pain. To this date, we have existent International Organizations that deal specifically with animal pain such as the International Veterinary Academy of Pain Management (IVAPM) in the United States, and a working group of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) - the Special Interest Group in Pain Management in Non-Human Species - in Europe. In Italy, research groups or associations that deal specifically with the subject matter have never been created, although research projects on various issues related to pain have begun to be proposed, demonstrating an increased sensitivity and interest toward this subject. Based on the above stated, the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Perugia has instituted the Study Center on Animal Pain (CeSDA – Centro di Studio sul Dolore Animale), with research and training purposes. The center involves many Professors of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (since pain is a multidisciplinary subject we tried to cover all major areas inherent to the topic) and of Human Medicine (given that there are many similarities between non-verbalizing patients in the two fields); we considered appropriate to have a good collaboration between the two Faculties, as well as collaborating freelancers (Vets self-employed or other professional experts in issues related to pain).