Pain Management

What is pain management?

Pain management encompasses pharmacological (treatment with medicine), nonpharmacological, and other approaches to Prevent, Reduce, or Stop pain sensations.

Why does one need to control Pain?

Pain serves as an alert to potential or actual damage to the body. Any damage to the body or its organs starts a chemical reaction in the body, which is relayed to the brain. Brain senses it as pain reacts accordingly.

What are the different types of pains?

Pain is generally divided into two categories: Acute / Nociceptive pain - the pain that is transmitted by nociceptors, is typically called acute pain. This kind of pain is associated with injury, headaches, disease, and many other conditions. It usually resolves once the condition that caused it is resolved. E.g. Pain after surgery, an accident, fall or any other trauma.

From onset up to three months

Chronic: Many times pain does not resolve even after healing or a cure has been achieved for the procedure that was the main reason for the pain to start with. In this situation, the brain continues to perceive pain and the pain may be considered chronic.

From three to six months

The pain that endures beyond a normal healing time. E.g. cancer pain, persistent and degenerative conditions, and neuropathy, low back pain or nerve damage.

Comprehensive Services Offered by BLK Hospital

Our integrated team of specialists conducts detailed assessment and treatment for persistent, chronic pain and provides patients with pain-oriented management plans and treatment using state-of-the-art facilities. Some of the major services we offer at the department include

Non-invasive, non-drug pain management

• Exercise: Physical Exercise with the aim of increasing strength, flexibility, and restoring normal motion. The doctor designs the patient-centric exercise programs according to the individual’s medical needs.
• Manual techniques: Such as applying force to the joints, muscles, and ligaments.
• Behavioural modification: These methods are to optimise the patient’s response towards back pain and painful stimuli. The techniques used are:
• Relaxation techniques
• Coping techniques
• For symptomatic improvement, learning to control
• Muscle tension
• Blood pressure
• Heart rate
• Superficial heating or cooling of skin: This method includes the use of cold packs and hot packs to help relieve pain.
• Electrotherapy: the most commonly used electrotherapy is Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS). This therapy aims to reduce back pain by using a low-voltage electric stimulation that interacts with the sensory nervous system. The efficacy of TENS as a treatment yielded either positive or neutral results for back pain management. It is not for someone who is:
• Pregnant
• Has a history of epilepsy or heart disease
• Using a pacemaker

Non-invasive pharmacologic pain management

If the non-drug pain management does not provide any relief than the doctor may advise the following medication to the patient, along with physical therapy:

• Over-the-counter (OTC) pain relievers: Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB, others) or naproxen sodium (Aleve),
• Muscle relaxants
• Topical pain relievers in the form of creams, salves or ointments
• Narcotics: such as oxycodone or hydrocodone (Drugs containing opioids)
• Antidepressants: Tricyclic antidepressants, such as amitriptyline
• Injections: when other medicines don’t relieve your pain, your doctor may inject cortisone — an anti-inflammatory medication. This helps in decreasing inflammation and pain

Invasive pain management

The surgery is a last resort of treatment when all the other treatments for pain management have failed. However, if you have unrelenting pain that is associated with radiating leg pain or progressive muscle weakness caused due to nerve compression. Then your doctor might recommend you to undergo surgery. The common surgeries for pain management include:

• Arthroplasty
• Functional Neurosurgery
• Microscopic /Endoscopic Disc Surgery
• Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery
• Neuro-endoscopy Surgery
• Spinal Cord Stimulator
• Spine Fusion Surgery
• Total joint replacement
• Vertebroplasty

Conditions Treated by BLK Hospital

Some of the major conditions we treat under our department of pain management involve:

• Acute and chronic pains
• Arthritis of any/all joints
• Back pain. Sciatica
• Cervical spondylosis
• Disc prolapse or slipped disc
• Fibromyalgia & myofascial syndrome
• Frozen shoulder
• Generalised body aches
• Golfer's elbow
• Headaches of any kind
• Heel pain
• Myofascial pain
• Pain after an accident, fall or any other trauma
• Pain associated with injury
• Pain due to Cancer
• Pain in buttocks and leg pains
• Pain persistent after the surgery
• Postherpetic neuralgia
• Tennis elbow
• Trigeminal Neuralgia (tic)

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why treat pain when I can live with it?

Pain can have a negative impact on a person's quality of life and impede recovery from illness or injury. Unrelieved pain can become a syndrome in its own right and cause a downward spiral in a person's health and outlook. Uncontrolled and poorly managed pain leads to various problems like anxiety neurosis, hypertension, and depression with or without suicidal tendencies. Chronic untreated pain also leads to decrease in work output and loss of healthy social life. Managing pain properly facilitates recovery, prevents additional health complications, and improves an individual's quality of life.

2. Who treats pain?

Acute and chronic pains are treated by a team of pain management consultants & specialists doctors who are trained and experienced exclusively in pain management. They collaborate with various other specialists also to treat underlying disease as well.

3. What type of pain does a Pain Consultant manage?

Pain Consultant manages Any Pain of Any duration, present anywhere in the body, namely

• Headaches of any kind.
• Cervical spondylosis.
• Back pain. Sciatica.
• Pain in buttocks and leg pains
• Pain due to Cancer.
• Pain persistent after the surgery.
• Post herpetic neuralgia.
• Trigeminal neuralgia (tics).
• Frozen shoulder
• Arthritis of any/all joints
• Tennis elbow
• Golfer's elbow
• Heel pain
• Generalised body aches
• Fibromyalgia & myofacial syndrome
• Also a lot of other pains.