What is pain management?
Pain management is a considered, comprehensive approach to relieving or reducing chronic pain that helps you feel more comfortable and able to do more.
More than 20% of people in the United States live with chronic pain problems, which has a significant impact on the economy and makes their lives miserable. Unfortunately, many causes of chronic pain have no cure, so finding ways to manage them long-term is essential.
The Vital Orthopedic & Spine Institute team excels at finding the best combination of treatments for chronic pain.
Why would I need pain management?
Pain is an individual experience — what feels painful to one person may not bother another. The way you feel pain also differs, so you might have intense, shooting leg pain because of a herniated disc in your lower back, while someone else might have tingling, numbness, and localized throbbing pain.
There are also numerous ways of treating pain, which again, work for some people and have little effect on others. The Vital Orthopedic & Spine Institute team uses their expertise to amend your treatment program where necessary to optimize pain reduction.
What does pain management involve?
An accurate diagnosis of what’s causing your pain can make a significant difference in reducing your symptoms. For example, you might have lower back and pelvic pain that seems to be caused by a herniated lumbar disc. However, you might also have sacroiliac joint pain in your pelvis that requires a different treatment to the herniated disc.
Therefore, the first stage in managing your pain is to determine what’s causing it, where that’s possible. The Vital Orthopedic & Spine Institute team might recommend diagnostic imaging tests like X-rays or a CT/MRI scan, plus electromyogram and nerve conduction velocity tests to check for nerve damage.
Your provider also looks at aspects of your lifestyle that could be making your pain worse, including lack of exercise, being overweight, and a poor diet.
What treatments might be in my chronic pain management plan?
Your chronic pain management plan aims to target the underlying causes of your condition as well as minimizing the symptoms. Therefore, although pain relief medication could form part of your treatment, it won’t be the main approach. Potential treatments include:
- Anti-inflammatory medication
- Muscle relaxants
- Physical therapy
- Platelet-rich plasma therapy
- Stem cell injections
- Joint injections
- Epidural corticosteroid injections
- Trigger point injections
- Nerve blocks
- Radiofrequency ablation
- Nerve decompression
- Joint replacement
- SI-BONE® iFuse Implant System®
- Minimally invasive spine surgery
The Vital Orthopedic & Spine Institute team regularly reviews your chronic pain management plan to see how well the treatments are performing and make changes where necessary. In this way, they optimize your symptom reduction and help you stay active and enjoy life.
To find out how you can benefit from expert pain management at Vital Orthopedic & Spine Institute, call their office today or book an appointment online.
