Book excerpt: A concise overview of the most important information about every clinical aspect of pain. It is for health care professionals, in practice and in training, involved in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with a wide variety of acute and chronic pain problems. The handbook is divided into three sections: clinical pain states, therapeutic approaches, and special problems of assessment and management. The emphasis throughout is on the diagnosis and treatment of clinical pain states and includes recent advances in all aspects of therapy. A special section is devoted to assessing and managing the most challenging problems: pain in children, burn pain, neuropathic pain, cancer pain, gender-related pain, AIDS-related pain and pain in the elderly.