| Chronic pain was originally defined as pain that has lasted 6 months or longer. It is now defined as pain that persists longer than the normal course of time associated with a particular type of injury. This constant or intermittent pain has often outlived its purpose, as it does not help the body to prevent injury.
Chronic pain is not an entity but a process; its neurophysiological components are something of a mystery. Patients with chronic pain present with problems both unique and universal.
“Pain, one of the primary reasons for seeking health care, cannot be quantified or proven.”
Types of Chronic pain malignant and non-malignant:
- Pain associated with malignancy can be caused by the cancer itself or by treatment.
- Non-malignant pain includes a variety of causes: arthritis, neuropathy/neuralgia, back pain from injury or disorders cervical stenosis, degenerative disc disease, other disc disorders, etc), migraines and other types of headaches, abdominal pain from chronic pancreatitis, bowel disorders, etc; pelvic pain from various conditions (endometriosis,, etc); and also diffuse conditions such as fibromyalgia, reflex sympathetic dystrophy, and other systemic autoimmune/connective tissue conditions, multiple sclerosis and some other neuromuscular condition.
Chronic pain is and requires a better understanding of pain to treat it. Not all pain that persist will turn into chronic pain. People experience chronic pain differently. Likewise, the effectiveness of a particular treatment for chronic pain will often differ from person to person. For example, a particular medication or injection for a herniated disc may provide effective pain relief for some and not others.
One problem is that not all patients with similar condition will develop chronic pain, and it is not understood why some people will develop chronic pain. For example, a condition that appears relatively minor can lead to severe chronic pain, and a serious condition can be relatively painless.
TASK Pain Management and Wellness Clinic seeks to alleviate chronic pain through understanding various underlying causes of the pain
Chronic pain can be caused by not only tissue or nerve damage but also by depression and mood.
“Depression is a disorder of the body as much as the mind…For a substantial number of people, possibly up to half of depression sufferers, bodily pain is the way depression presents itself” (When Depression Hurts the Body, Newsweek. July 2002).
As pain moves from acute stage to chronic stage, influences of factors other than tissue damage and injury come more into play and influences other than tissue input become more important as pain becomes more chronic. Pain medicine and pain management as a medical specialty is relatively new. However now that chronic pain is becoming recognized as a primary problem, rather than always being a symptom of a disease, the specialty of pain management is starting to grow.
It is critical for the doctor and the patient to have an understanding of the difference between acute pain and chronic pain. Acute pain is the pain is of injured or diseased tissue. When the injury has finished healing, the correlated pain will subside. For example, with a herniated disc, once the pressure on the nerves is alleviated the acute pain stops. For this reason, medical treatment for acute pain focuses on healing the underlying cause of the pain. Additionally, with acute pain the severity of pain directly correlates to the level of tissue damage, this provides us with a protective reflex, such as to stop an activity when it causes pain. However, chronic pain does not serve as a protective or other biological function. Therefore the treatments would need to depend on the underlying cause of the pain.
Treatment Options:
We offer a wide range of medication management, therapy and complementary holistic medicine treatment options. These treatments may be used alone or in combination to offer you the best opportunity for lasting relief of your pain.
Anesthetic injections, which are delivered into specific spaces of the spinal column
Nerve blocks, which help relieve pain by injecting local anesthetics, with or without cortisone, near a specific nerve or group of nerves to break the cycle of pain
Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) which uses a small battery-powered device to deliver electricity through electrodes placed on the skin at specific points
Psychological counseling is offered as an outpatient service and may include psychotherapy to reduce depression, anxiety, anger or other emotions which often increase pain. Psychological counseling may also include relaxation and coping techniques.
Physical therapy to teach proper body mechanics and to help improve strength, flexibility and endurance
Occupational therapy to help you improve your performance of tasks at home and at work
Vocational counseling to help you re-enter the job market or help you adjust your work environment to decrease your pain.
Counseling, if necessary, to safely eliminate dependence on narcotics, tranquilizers and sedatives.
The medical staff is supported by a team of skilled and experienced care givers including registered nurses and physical rehabilitation specialists.
Patient Responsibilities:
Success in the Chronic Pain Rehabilitation Program requires that patients:
- Sincerely desire to live as normally as possible.
- Are willing to work toward making changes in their lives.
- Are open to investigating all factors related to their pain.
- Understand that improvement is not something we provide, but something we help to achieve.
- Are willing to allow others to relate to them as people, not patients.
Our Approach:
We begin each evaluation by carefully reviewing the medical records from other institutions. For this reason, we ask that people send, or have their referring physician forward the results of any previous medical tests that relate to their pain.
Based on our review of these records, an evaluation is tailored to the needs of the individual, and appropriate members of the evaluation team are scheduled to meet with him or her. The person may be seen by specialists in pain management, rehabilitation medicine, physical therapy, neurology, orthopedics, dentistry, gynecology, internal medicine or other specialties as appropriate. If a treatable cause for the pain can be identified, the appropriate treatment is recommended.
For individual with unresolved chronic pain, we may recommend either inpatient or outpatient therapy in our Chronic Pain Rehabilitation Program. In any case, a Pain Specialist will discuss and carefully explain the treatment to patient and family.
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