Episode 16 of the PRICE of Pain podcast features Dr. Keesha Roach on chronic pain in sickle cell disease.
Sickle cell is a useful case for thinking about pain in general, because it defeats most of the usual assumptions.
The pain is not vague or unexplained — the mechanism is well understood. It is severe, recurrent, and frequently requires emergency care. And yet patients with sickle cell disease report among the most persistent experiences of disbelief anywhere in medicine: being treated as drug-seeking, having pain reports discounted, waiting longer in emergency departments than patients with comparably severe conditions.
If a condition with a clear, documented, unambiguous biological mechanism still produces this pattern, then the pattern is not really about diagnostic uncertainty.
Roach’s research examines chronic pain in this population, including how it develops and how it is managed across the lifespan.
The episode runs about 45 minutes and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
What we study:
- Pain and Aging
- Chronic Pain Risk Factors
- Pain and the Brain
- Musculoskeletal Pain
- Pain and Exercise
- Non-Medical Treatment of Pain
Prefer to talk to a person? Call 352-273-5967 or email PRICE-CTSI@ufl.edu.
UF Study ID IRB201400126
References
- PRICE of Pain podcast archive, 22 episodes (2021-2022). https://price.ctsi.ufl.edu/price-of-pain-podcast/