Pain control in Asia: Foreword of the round table discussion of pain control

In the near future, the population of elderly people will increase tremendously. Therefore, in the 21st century, pain control for elderly patients who have chronic and intractable pain is one of the most important medical fields. In this round table discussion, pain clinicians from Japan, Taiwan, China, Korea, and Philippines discussed the problems and useful methods for pain control of chronic and intractable pain in patients in Asia. We were able to understand the differences of pain control among the Asian countries, and also, we introduced the classification of pain patient's sex, age, chronic non-cancer pain, and treatments of non-cancer pain patients in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Relief Center, University of Tokyo Hospital. This round table discussion gave us valuable hints for the application to chronic pain patients.