接触型熱痛計と非接触型熱痛計の比較研究 : 痛覚定量化のための刺激方法の検討

It is important to quantify pain not only for the human and environmental engineerings as well as for the clinical medicine. However, it is difficult to measure pain, because pain is a subjective phenomenon, which is influenced by many factors. For quantitative measuring, dolorimeters using heat stimuli (thermal dolorimeter) have been widely used since 1960. Dolorimeters are classified into two types, namely skin contacting type and non-contacting type, by way of the heat stimulation. In the non-contacting type, only heat is given to the skin, but this types needs large set-ups due to the optical systems. In the contacting types, the heat source is directly applied to the human skin, with simple and small heat stimulating proves. But is may be given some other effect for the thermal pain thresholds because of the addition of sense of pressure. However, the effect of pressure to thermal pain threshold have not been still sufficiently studied. In this study, we investigated the effects of the mechanical stimulations on the thermal pain thresholds. As the result, the subjects were classified into two groups according to the trends of variation, namely rising and falling. Feelings of the pain in some subject were so far inhibited by pressure, so that erythema was induced in the stimulated skin sites. During the experiments, the subjects often had invasive feering with a weighting load over 1.5kgf.Additionally, We have measure thermal pain thresholds using a semiconductor laser set-ups(808 nm). We have measured the thermal pain thresholds using a Ar laser device (514,488nm) in our former studies. The pain thresholds using the semiconductor laser were significantly lower than the results by Ar laser and the improved thermal dolorimeter.departmental bulletin pape