What is "visceral pain"?

What is "visceral pain"?

Marc Darrow (Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Joint Rehabilitation Sports Medical Center, Inc. ) gives expert video advice on: What are some specific types of chronic pain?; What is "somatic pain"?; How is somatic pain treated? and more...

Visceral pain is pain that comes from the organs inside the body, the viscera of the body. It can be just about anything you can conceive of that goes on inside the body. Things like cancer cause visceral pain. Cancers grow and become space occupying lesions that put pressure on the organs and they can also metastasise. Cancers can metastasise outside of the organ systems through the blood and to other areas, or by just pushing through the body, and we can end up having things like bone pain coming from visceral pain. We can have abdominal pain from the GI system; from the stomach, let's say, and you could have disastrous abdominal pain due to things like spasms in the stomach. They can be very non-specific things that are very difficult to treat.