DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2018.v06i09.084

Pages: 3662-3665

Tactile acuity refers to the precision with which we can sense touch, 1 and this precision is thought to be impaired in some chronic pain conditions2. Recent neuroscientific researches have suggested that chronic pain is accompanied by cortical reorganization and may serve an important function in the persistence of the pain experience. Discriminative ability is dependent on the integrity of primary somatosensory cortex; hence, in some chronically painful conditions, cortical reorganization appears to manifest as reduced tactile acuity at the affected body region. This cortical reorganization influences the cognitive and behavioural changes to the chronic pain sufferers. Two point discrimination is one of the measures to find out the cortical tactile acuity in the human body. The aim of this study to find out the deficits in tactile acuity related to pain intensity. To find out the relationship between the tactile acuity and the pain intensity on chronic low back pain patients. This is a cross- sectional investigation on the non-neuropathic chronic low back pain patients. SPSS Version 16 will be used for data analysis. A Spearman’s correlation coefficient (rS) was calculated to estimate the overall relationship between tactile acuity and the pain intensity. The significance value for spearman’s correlations of pain intensity with two point discrimination positively correlated (rs = 0.550 and p < 0.001). In summary, the main findings described in this study suggested that decreased tactile acuity coincided with the pain intensity with chronic non-neuropathic back pain subjects.