Pain is a symptom that can be associated with dangerous diseases such as cancer. Hence, to avoid delay in diagnosis of an underlying serious condition, it is important to be thorough when assessing pain. However, all pains are not symptoms of an underlying disease. Instead, many chronic pain conditions can be viewed as diseases in their own right. Indeed, sometimes the pain is the disease - such is for instance the case for fibromyalgia, painless fibromyalgia being a contradiction in terms. The new classification of chronic pain conditions according to the eleventh version of International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) is presented and discussed. It is argued that the classification makes pain medicine visible as an academic discipline; that it may contribute to a legitimization process in which the suffering of pain patients is recognized semantically and taxonomically; and that it opens up new research possibilities in the chronic pain field.

Det är ofta fruktbart att se på långvarig smärta som en sjukdom i sig snarare än som ett symtom: även smärtsinnet kan bli sjukt.

Den elfte versionen av International classification of diseases (ICD-11) antogs av WHO 2019, och översättning till svenska pågår.

ICD-11 innehåller en ny klassifikation av olika långvariga smärttillstånd.