Do you need a pain specialist, find out here
In today’s world, there is lots of demand for pain specialists. After all, pain is a tricky and all too common a problem. In fact, in a recently conducted survey, almost 25% of the population, i.e., more than 76 million Americans (aged 20 years and older) have said that they suffer from pain that has lasted even more than a day. So, when the pain one suffers from crosses a limit, it is time to visit and consult with a professional pain specialist who is at the top of his or her own field who can help the patient deal with the pain painlessly.
For example, in neurology, a pain specialist knows how to treat and resolve migraines. In a different case like cancer, a pain specialist can delicately handle cancer operation through anesthesiology.
Pain is not just a physical sensation or an emotional experience. Primarily, there are two major types of pain that people experience:
- Acute Pain: This lasts for a shorter time, probably because of trauma/surgery.
- Chronic Pain and cancer pain: This is a lifelong process to manage.
It is over here at this stage of the patient’s health condition that a pain specialist comes in. A pain management specialist with his/her trained skills successfully diagnoses, evaluate and treat the pain that the patients are suffering from at a personal level. It can be according to their health condition, mental emotions and the environment they live in.
The pain management specialists are physicians who are specially trained in evaluating each person’s medical documents, diagnosis with the right kind of treatment before implementing to them. Each disorder and person have different reasons for their pain – it could be because of an injury surgery, nerve damage etc. Concisely without any apparent cause, pain in itself can be a problem at times.
Most pain management specialists are usually referred to by a primary care physician. Primary care doctor and pain physicians are closely associated with each other to ensure good communication, which in turn serves an excellent treatment to their patients. During the pain management sessions of treatment, patients too in turn are mentioned by specialists because their different types of pain problem and how they handle the situation brings in a typify approach.
The first two sittings with the doctors will be a process to evaluate that particular person’s pain problem. The evaluation could be through historical medical documents, physical exam and individual review test. After evaluation, the specialist will decide with an appropriate treatment strategy.