More dramatically, following the terrorists’ bombing of New York skyscrapers and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., it was found that the level of pain in chronic pain patients being treated in three widely dispersed sites in the U.S. increased 17% in male patients and 47% in female patients when the bombing occurred between pain clinic visits. Subsequent visits to the same pain clinics showed that there was a lag in pain response to treatment following that stressful event, with men improving only 3% on subsequent treatment visits and women still suffering 34% more pain on subsequent treatment visits than they did prior to the stressful event. (The authors noted that females are known to respond more dramatically to stress related pain, such as in the post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), than do males.)
