What is Pain Management?
Pain management is a medical specialty born out of the need for treating all types of pain, including musculoskeletal, spinal and neuropathic pain disorders. With an accurate diagnosis and early intervention, the hope is to help patients avoid spiraling into a state of chronic pain, or at the very least reduce the severity of pain, and improve patients’ quality of life. Minimally invasive procedures and proper use of medications are implemented to achieve those goals.
According to the American Society of Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine, a pain management specialist is a physician with special training in evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of all different types of pain. Pain is actually a wide spectrum of disorders including acute pain, chronic pain and cancer pain and sometimes a combination of these. Pain can also arise for many different reasons such as surgery, injury, nerve damage, and metabolic problems such as diabetes. Occasionally, pain can even be the problem all by itself, without any obvious cause at all.
As the field of medicine learns more about the complexities of pain, it has become more important to have physicians with specialized knowledge and skills to treat these conditions. An in-depth knowledge of the physiology of pain, the ability to evaluate patients with complicated pain problems, understanding of specialized tests for diagnosing painful conditions, appropriate prescribing of medications to varying pain problems, and skills to perform procedures (such as nerve blocks, spinal injections and other interventional techniques) are all part of what a pain management specialist uses to treat pain. In addition, the broad variety of treatments available to treat pain is growing rapidly and with increasing complexity. With an increasing number of new and complex drugs, techniques, and technologies becoming available every year for the treatment of pain, the pain management physician is uniquely trained to use this new knowledge safely and effectively to help his or her patients. Finally, the pain management specialist plays an important role in coordinating additional care such as physical therapy, psychological therapy, and rehabilitation programs in order to offer patients a comprehensive treatment plan with a multidisciplinary approach to the treatment of their pain.
Pain management effectively helps thousands of people each year and is an area of concentration that primary care physicians, orthopedists, neurologists and other healthcare providers increasingly rely on for their patients. Ask your doctor about a referral to Dr. Epps today and get your life back!