PainTrace Helps Medical Professionals Assess Pain in Non-verbal Patients, Including Animals
Veterinarians and researchers can now objectively visualize pain real-time via PainTrace, a first-of-its-kind objective monitoring system that detects, quantifies and tracks pain in mammals.
“Unlike humans, our veterinary patients cannot verbalize the pain they are experiencing,” said Troy Fowler, VP of Sales, BioTraceIT. “PainTrace will provide veterinarians with a groundbreaking technology to visualize and read direct pain biosignals to help lead the path to wellness.”
Veterinarian Mike Petty said, “During my examination, PainTrace detected and reported neck pain but the dog showed no clinical sign of pain. A subsequent MRI confirmed the presence of a cervical spine tumor. PainTrace was right!”
BioTraceIT is also actively pursuing human FDA approval for PainTrace. Much like veterinary patients, human patients may also have difficulty communicating or accurately reporting pain. Sixty to 80 percent of cognitively impaired patients experience pain and are often unable to verbally communicate their emotions and needs. Pain is often a missed or delayed diagnosis.
PainTrace communicates the presence of pain, providing a valuable tool to support diagnosis and confirmation of treatment effectiveness. PainTrace measures patient responses to examinations and treatments aiding in evaluation of healing and recovery. Additionally, PainTrace offers instantaneous real-time measurements of both acute and chronic pain. Monitoring pain over time can potentially lead to early diagnosis and improved overall health.
PainTrace leverages the BioTraceIT analytics application software and offers qualitative and quantitative monitoring across companion animal care, equine and bovine care. This multi-species measurement tool will also be important for clinical researchers in pursuit of novel pain therapies and will improve efficiency in translational research.
According to AHAA/AAFP Pain Management Guidelines for Dogs and Cats, a pain score is considered the “fourth vital sign,” after temperature, pulse and respiration. Additionally, the Merck Veterinary Manual supports this adding that “pain assessment must be able to distinguish individual sensitivities” and recognizes that current methods are “prone to errors of over/under reporting.”
“Pain assessment should be a routine component of every physical examination,” said Dr. Ralph Harvey, Chair, BioTraceIT Scientific Advisory Board. “While advanced technologies will never fully meet all of our challenges or resolve all our limitations, the potential applications of PainTrace will be a real game changer in a ‘world of hurt.’”