(Washington Post via MSN) – Measuring pain, one of the most fundamental tasks in medicine, remains one of the least precise, a shortcoming that helped fuel the nation’s opioid crisis. In an era of genomic medicine and artificial intelligence, doctors still ask patients to rate their pain from 0 to 10 or, in the case of very young children, with cartoon faces, ranging from smiley to frowny.

Studies have shown that these efforts are undermined by biases that have led the medical community to consistently underestimate the pain of women and minorities, especially Black Americans.

But researchers are now on a quest to find objective biological indicators of pain that will enable doctors to quantify it as they do heart rate and blood pressure. (Read More)