Pain Management

Pain management is the discipline concerned with the relief of pain.
Acute pain, such as that which occurs with trauma, often has a reversible cause and may require only transient measures and correction of the underlying problem. In contrast, chronic pain results from conditions that are difficult to diagnose and treat, and that may take a long time to reverse. Pain management generally benefits from a multidisciplinary approach that includes pharmacologic measures (analgesics such as narcotics or NSAIDs and modifiers,such as tricyclic antidepressants or anticonvulsants), non-pharmacologic measures (such as interventional procedures, physical therapy and physical exercise, application of ice and/or heat), and psychological measures (such as biofeedback and cognitive therapy).

Pain management practitioners come from all fields of medicine. Most often, pain fellowship trained physicians are anesthesiologists, neurologists, physiatrists or psychiatrists. Some practitioners focus more on the pharmacologic management of the patient, while others are very proficient at the interventional management of pain. Interventional procedures typically used for chronic back pain include: epidural steroid injections, facet joint injections, neurolytic blocks, Spinal Cord Stimulators (SCS) and intrathecal drug delivery system implants, etc. Over the last decade the number of interventional procedures done for pain has grown to a very large number.