Appreciation of pain in the elderly.

Pain was evaluated in 333 duodenal ulcer patients, and 86 myocardial infarction patients by the verbal rating scale method. We compared older patients (greater than 65 years of age) to younger controls and found a highly significant association between old age with mild pain and young age with moderate or severe pain in both diseases. We investigated two totally different diseases and got similar results. Thus, it could be concluded that age itself might be the underlying reason for the association with pain severity and not the character or origin of the pain.