Pain Management
- A Multi-Specialty Approach
- Changing Ideas About Pain Management
- A Better Way to Control Chronic Pain
- New Techniques for Common Problems
- Am I a Candidate for Pain Management?
Pain management is a cornerstone of the clinical approach at The Institute for Orthopedic Science, providing daily management of patients with postoperative, post-traumatic, and other types of acute pain requiring specialized interventions such as epidural analgesia, other regional anesthetic techniques, or complex pharmacological management. Support is also provided to the operating rooms for placement of epidural catheters and regional blocks for surgery preoperatively.
A Multi-Specialty Approach
The Institute for Orthopedic Science uses a comprehensive multi-specialty approach to treat patients with a wide variety of pain-related conditions, including: neurologists, physiatrists and anesthesiologists as well as licensed acupuncturists.
This broad range of specialties enables treatment of the simplest to the most complex pain-related conditions, including arthritis, cancer pain, migraine, occupational injuries, neck pain, lower back pain, sciatica, post-operative pain, post-back surgery pain, shingles, complex regional pain syndromes, urogenital/pelvic pain, peripheral neuropathy, and neuralgias.
Changing Ideas About Pain Management
The highly-skilled providers of The Institute for Orthopedic Science are dedicated not only to the advancement of pain management, but also to revolutionizing popular misconceptions of what pain management means.
The Institute for Orthopedic Science uses a non-narcotic approach to help patients control their pain without the risk of addiction. Non-medication treatments include epidural steroid injections, joint injections, nerve blocks and spinal cord stimulation.
A Better Way to Control Chronic Pain
If you're in chronic pain, you're also in good company-- nearly one in four people in the United States suffer some form of joint pain regularly, and worse, only half of them have visited a doctor for pain relief. That's because people rarely understand what pain management is and how it works. At The Institute for Orthopedic Science, the emphasis is on treating the underlying cause of your pain rather than just medicating the symptoms.
Pain management has two goals. The first is to treat the chronic pain that results from disease and injury. The second is to improve your quality of life. The Institute does this with techniques to reduce painful symptoms while avoiding surgery whenever possible. When surgery is the best method, the Institute's pain management physicians use minimally invasive techniques that are very safe and effective.
We combine these methods with physical therapy, exercise, acupuncture, counseling and other kinds of treatment, to eliminate or minimize the use of narcotics. This helps avoid some of the side effects that make it so difficult for you to enjoy a normal life. These approaches cannot always make you pain free, but it can reduce your pain so that you can take part in normal activities again-so that you can rejoin life rather than sitting on the sidelines.
New Techniques for Common Problems
Three of the most common causes of chronic pain are: herniated (slipped) discs, osteoarthritis, and osteoporosis. Here are some of the ways the Institute relieves the pain caused by each:
Herniated discs: The Institute's approach begins with nerve root blocks, which are injections to reduce inflammation and swelling and lessen painful pressure on nerves. It also uses percutaneous disc decompression to treat small-to-medium sized herniated discs. In this procedure, a device is introduced into the damaged disc via a needle. Small portions of the damaged disc are removed, relieving pressure on nerves coming from the spine.
Because the Institute uses local anesthesia and light sedation, patients do not stay at the hospital overnight, and the tiny incision means faster healing. An alternative is spinal cord stimulation. Here, doctors place an electrode in the spinal column, generating an electrical impulse to block the sensation of pain in much the same way a 'white noise' machine masks unwanted sounds.
Osteoarthritis: Patients with unrelieved back pain resulting from arthritis can be treated with steroid injections into a facet joint, which link vertebrae. If patients find only temporary relief from these pain-relief injections, the Institute offers radiofrequency ablation of the facet nerves, a procedure which destroys only the nerve fibers which transmit pain impulses.
Osteoporosis: Pain management for fractures from osteoporosis includes percutaneous vertebroplasty, a procedure to inject acrylic cement into the vertebra. This fixes the fracture, stabilizes the spine, and reduces pain, and is done under local anesthesia and conscious sedation. The Institute also offers kyphoplasty, which places a balloon into the vertebra through a needle. The balloon then is inflated in an attempt to restore, or partially restore, the damaged spine section's height.
Am I a Candidate for Pain Management?
You may be a candidate for pain management care if your pain is severe and does not respond to conservative treatment, if it lasts more than two weeks, if the need for narcotics to manage pain keeps growing, and if prior surgery has not lessened your pain.