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The common practice of asking patients to rate their pain on a 10-point scale might suggest that the goal of pain therapy always is to achieve a score of 0. Investigators in New York explored the relation between pain tolerability and numerical pain severity in 663 primary care patients (median age, 62) who received prescriptions for analgesics or who had chronic-pain diagnoses (mostly osteoarthritis or back pain). Patients were asked if pain was tolerable (possible answers: yes, no, or not in pain) and then were asked to rate pain severity during the prior 24 hours on a 0-to-10–point scale. Patients who rated their pain as 0 were excluded.
No patients who rated their pain severity as 1 to 3 reported that their pain was intolerable. Among pa…