What exactly is Pain Management ?
These days it is recognized as a specialist area of medical practice.
Pain clinics are available in both the NHS and the private sector.
Such clinics are often multidisciplinary and the team may include anaesthetists, nurses and psychologists.
In reality, most doctors and allied health professionals, spend a lot of their time trying to manage pain.
Pain management techniques include advice regarding specific exercises, prescription of drugs, talking therapies and injections
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As a surgeon, I view surgery as a form of pain management. The primary purpose of the operations that I perform is to relieve pain.
It is my job to try to determine which form of pain management should be used to help my patients in Guildford.
I will always recommend the least invasive forms of treatment initially.
Medicines can be helpful. Often patients will have tried various pain killers before they see me. I do not have access to any special pain killers. General Practitioners are very skilled at prescribing drugs are likely to help back pain and sciatica.
Many patients will also have tried various forms of manipulative therapy before consulting me. Such treatment might include Physiotherapy, Osteopathy or Chiropractic.
Most of the time these measures are sufficient to allow a patient to gain confidence and function with little pain.
If not, I will next consider whether some form of spinal injection is likely to help.
The most common types of injection are epidurals, nerve root blocks and facet joint injections.
In my practice these injections are performed in an operating theatre under intravenous sedation that is administered by an anaesthetist.
The results of injections are variable and I never guarantee that they will successfully relieve all pain permanently.
If it is clear that all other options have failed and if it is apparent that a given problem may be addressed surgically, then and only then will I discuss the pros and cons of having an operation.
The pain management consultants recommend the following web site to patients with chronic pain. It contains some useful resources which I commend to you.