Pillar Three: Diagnose the kind of pain and treat it: for example, neuropathic pain versus nociceptive pain. Pillar Four: Other symptoms, conditions, and complications such as mood and sleep. Pillar Five: Personal responsibility and self management. If you, as the physician, are working harder

than your patient, there is something wrong. The optimal pharmacologic approach to the management of neuropathic pain appears to be a stepwise management algorithm.5 There Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical are a number of published guidelines, but for the purposes of Canadian urologists, the Canadian guideline is the most appropriate. This describes four levels of neuropathic therapy developed for peripheral neuropathic pain, but in the absence of specific controlled studies may be used as guideposts. There are few well-controlled pharmacotherapy studies in this area.

Management of chronic pain refractory to conservative treatment, including standard analgesic and condition-specific therapies (see later in Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the article), should normally start with a tricyclic and/or gabapentinoid (gabapentin or pregabalin; then go to a drug such as duloxetine Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical or venlafaxine or a topical medication such as lidocaine, gabapentin, or capsaicin; an opioid such as tramadol, oxycodone, or morphine; and then a variety of agents (Figure 1). Figure 1 Stepwise pharmacologic management of chronic pain refractory to conservative treatment. CR, continuous release; SNRI, serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor; TCA, tricyclic antidepressant. [Allan Gordon, MD] CP as a Mechanistic Model of UCPPS The etiology of CP/CPPS is unknown. Our current working hypothesis is that there is likely a trigger event such as infection, trauma, or even stress that, in susceptible individuals, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical results Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in chronic pelvic pain. The pain is either AP24534 modulated or perpetuated by factors including psychologic, inflammatory/immune,

neurologic, and endocrine aspects. The clinical manifestation may also be affected by the patient’s social situation. The epidemiology of CP/CPPS suggests that, in some men, it may progress along with other systemic diseases. In the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored Chronic Prostatitis Cohort study, men with CP/CPPS were six times more likely to report a history of cardiovascular disease than age-matched asymptomatic controls. They were five times more likely to report a history of neurologic disease, and twice as likely all to report sinusitis and anxiety/depression.6 A recent review of the overlap between CP/CPPS, IC/PBS, and systemic pain conditions such as IBS, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) found that 21% of men with CPPS report a history of musculoskeletal, rheumatologic, or connective tissue disorder. Men with CP/CPPS report CFS twice as often as asymptomatic controls, and 19% to 79% of men with CPPS report IBS or IBS symptoms.