Abstract
Pain in elders has become an issue not only due to aging of the population. It was demonstrated, that some types of pain are attenuated in elders (visceral, postoperative and pain threshold), while the other ones are rather enhanced or at least more frequent (chronic, cancer and neuropathic pain).
The mentioned differences might be explained in terms of activation of diffuse noxious inhibitory control in case of decreased pain, and by higher prevalence of diseases accompanied by pain in case of chronic and cancer pain. Concerning neuropathic pain, higher prevalence is probably attributed to progressive degeneration of nervous system.