Is there a difference between "pain" and "tenderness"?

Question

I'd like to hear from medical providers in how you use these terms. To us lay people, they seem more or less synonymous I think. However, I'm realizing I've seen them written about and heard them used in ways that suggest they may be distinct descriptors for health care providers. So do you make a distinction, and if so, what is the nature of it?

Answer 1

You can have pain without tenderness and you can have tenderness without pain. Example? After you pass kidney stones, which is extremely painful, for many days you will feel extremely tender in the area. So if you were to lay flat on your back and I got my hands and pressed real hard down on your abdomen, chances are you would go ouch! Pain! If I kept repeating this, you would got ouch, ouch. The day after, you would feel very tender, but not in pain.

The nature of it, kidney stones have to travel from the kidney to the toilet via a small tube, and in doing the travel they tend to inflame the small tube. Once you have passed them into the toilet, the pain will be gone. However the following two days every time you go for a number one, you will feel it, as in tenderness, whereas when you normally go to a number one you do not feel it.

I always think the best description of tenderness is anything that involves inflammation, the difference between a deep cut and a cat scratch. Best of Luck

Answer 2

I think pain is something that hurts, without touching it......but tenderness is something that hurts slightly when touched.