How hard is to Treat Something You Can’t See

Chronic Pain Treatment

Pain Clinics

Final thoughts

How hard is to Treat Something You Can’t See

Suffering from chronic back pain can be emotionally trying, especially if it has gone on for months and no traditional or alternative treatments have helped. Back pain can often be hard for doctors to find the actual cause of the pain, even after x-rays and other means of testing.

Chronic back pain doesn’t serve any real purpose like acute pain does. Acute pain is a sudden pain that occurs out of the blue and is often very severe. This type of pain is usually a warning from the body that something is wrong somewhere. In other words, it serves a purpose. When you have acute pain, you can at least know that it will go away when the problem causing it is resolved.

The effects of chronic pain can be devastating. Either doctors can’t pinpoint the exact issue or surgery that may have been done to correct the problems is now the cause of the pain. Constant pain puts limitation on what the sufferer can do. This often results in weight gain and falling out of shape.

Chronic pain is different in everyone. It can be sharp, aching, radiating, localized to one spot, or spread out. If the problem is muscular, the pain could include cramps and spasms as well as swelling and stiffness. Chronic joint pain like in the facet joints can restrict movement and sometimes give a hot sensation in the effected area. All-in-all, chronic pain can run from mild and bearable to continuous and nearly incapacitating.

Actually finding the source of the pain and then determining the right treatment is very often frustrating for doctors. The doctors have no way to measure the pain and when they can’t find the physiological reason for it, the doctor may end up thinking the pain is nowhere but in the head of the patient. It’s not fun when your doctor thinks you are crazy and doesn’t believe you are suffering.

Chronic Pain Treatment

Because of the inability to diagnose chronic back pain, it often becomes necessary to use a combination of two or more treatments to get results that will reduce the pain. In many cases, the patient has been inactive for awhile because of their pain, and once treatment starts, the pain can get worse before it gets better because of their inactivity and resultant loss of flexibility and strength. These people should be patient, because time will eventually help reduce the pain and help them function again. This could involve learning new ways to do things to keep the pain down.

It’s time to see a professional for treatment if the pain has gone on for two or three months. Normally, the regimen will be one of or a combination of the treatments that were discussed in the Section on Mainstream Professional Remedies . This could include physical therapy, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, and even professional counseling.

If you have exhausted all of these treatments and are still suffering from chronic back pain, alternative methods may be tried. Many of these methods were discussed in the Section called Back Pain Alternative Therapies – Nonsurgical Cures. Alternative therapies include things like massage, acupuncture, Healing Touch, biofeedback, and chiropractic.

There are some options for pain relief that fall under the “surgery” window.

• Intrathecal drug delivery – A small tube called an intrathecal pain pump is inserted into the spinal cord that delivers pain signals up to the brain. Then a reservoir of pain medication is inserted beneath the skin of the stomach, which is connected to the second end of the pain pump. This automatically delivers medication to sight of the pain.

• Spinal cord stimulation – This procedure uses an electrical current to treat the pain. A small electrical generator is inserted under the skin. This little generator sends electric pulses to part of the spinal cord where electrodes have bee surgically attached.

• Radiofrequency ablation – In this procedure, radio waves are generated and then used to produce heat. The heat is applied to the nerves that are causing the pain. This destroys the nerves ability to send pain signals to the brain.

Doctors can prescribe strong narcotics for chronic back pain, but long-term use of these is never a good idea. They have side effects that among other things can damage organs and cause addiction.

Pain Clinics

If everything you and the doctors have tried to reduce your chronic back pain has failed, you may want to consider going to a pain management clinic. In these clinics, teams of doctors work together to consider everything that may be causing and adding to your pain. Once this is determined, they can outline a treatment plan.

Many patients who take this step have been using pain medications. Because these medications can actually make the root of the pain difficult to diagnose, the patient may have to go through detoxification to stop any dependency they may have developed.

One of the goals at a pain clinic is to help the patient understand what activities he or she can do and not what he or she can’t do because of their pain. They want the patient’s focus to be on function, not pain. Once a person gets active again and is able to do things they haven’t been able to do for a while, they can stop dwelling on the pain. Being active again can get the body’s endorphins producing again, to help do their job in blocking pain.

Once the patient gets moving again, one of the things they stress at pain clinics is to find as many hobbies and activities they can to help keep their mind off the pain. The more movement the patient can do, the easier it is to heal.

HOW TO SELECT A PAIN CLININC
If you have made the decision to ask for the help of pain clinic, there are many things you should look for when choosing one:

• The director of the clinic should have board certifications in several fields: anesthesiology and physical medicine and rehabilitation or pain management and psychology.

• A good clinic will conduct its diagnoses and treatment using staff from many different specialties like clinical psychology, vocational counseling, nutrition, and social work. The staff should also include registered nurses, physical therapists, an anesthesiologist, an expert in biofeedback, massage therapists, an acupuncturist, and a chiropractor.

Unfortunately, treatment at a pain clinic can be expensive what with all the tests performed and treatments administered. Health care provider are very hesitant to approve referrals to pain clinics because of the cost and because there is no way to quantitatively measure improvement, even thought the patient may feel better. For these reasons, it is important for these clinics to provide the best care they can to produce outcomes that are more definable.

Final thoughts
To help with your fight against pain, it is important to have a doctor with whom you are comfortable. After all, you will be spending a lot of time with him or her, and a good relationship is important.

There are cases when chronic pain cannot be cured. But it can definitely be managed in a way that can be a significant improvement of the quality of life endured when the pain was at its worst.

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