Pain Management
Pain Management is the specialty that deals with easing suffering and improvement in the quality of life of those living with pain. Pain management is important for ongoing pain control, especially if you suffer with long-term or chronic pain. After getting a pain assessment, your doctor can prescribe pain medicine or other pain treatments to help you get pain relief. Sometimes psychotherapy is also useful in learning new coping skills to help with chronic pain.
Patients may suffer from acute or traumatic pain, as well as chronic pain. While acute pain can be considerably and more quickly relieved once the underlying problem is identified and treated, chronic pain, which may be a symptom of some debilitating disease, is more difficult to diagnose and treat. The treatment of pain involves addressing both the sensory and emotional components of pain. Chronic Pain Management treatment schedules require the services of practitioners belonging to different branches of medicine. Pharmacologic, as well as non-pharmacologic procedures, psychological approaches, all may become necessary. The decreased self-worth, anxiety and depression caused by pain are best treated by a psychologist/psychiatrist with cognitive and behavioral therapies. The sensory component of pain is treated with chiropractic and physical therapies, medications, routine injections such as trigger point and epidural injections, and advanced interventional therapies.
Some of our pain management services include:
- Exercise
- Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS)
- Manual Techniques
- Administration of analgesics, NSAIDs, narcotic medications, muscle relaxants, and anti-convulsants and antidepressants
- Radiofrequency radio ablation
- Surgically implanted electrotherapy devices
- Prolotherapy
- Injections
Parkway Medical Center offers extensive outpatient pain management services under the direction of an on-staff Anesthesiologist. The majority of patients seen for outpatient pain management services have chronic lower back and neck problems with diagnostic evidence of entrapped or pinched nerves. Pain management care is usually sought because these problems have not responded to conservative treatments or the patient has elected not to have corrective surgery.