Pain
Pain unfortunately is very common as we get older. There are two main types of pain – nociceptive meaning pain from your body (like when you hit your hand) and neuropathic meaning pain from nerves (like sciatica). The treatment of pain first requires an understanding of the type of pain and how the pain affects you in your life. Determining this requires a careful history of the pain and a clinical examination. This helps to determine the potential causes of the pain and allows us to consider whether any scans or imaging will be necessary to confirm the possible diagnoses.
With a diagnosis confirmed, we can explore the various treatment possibilities. Chronic pain (meaning pain that has lasted for 3 months or more) can be difficult to treat, so it is especially important the diagnosis is established correctly, and you are not started on potential treatments that may cause you harm in the long-term. Setting goals for the management of chronic pain is important too, as it may not be possible to completely cure you of your pain, rather make the pain more manageable.
Much has been written about the negative effects of strong pain killers like opioids (or the morphines). These medications are addictive (meaning your body becomes dependent on them to function normally) and frequently have several side effects, which can lower quality of life and significantly increase the risk to the person taking them (for example increasing falls risk). Whilst opioids have a place in the treatment of pain, management of chronic pain is best achieved with a combination of non-drug and drug therapies. Emerging treatments for pain can also be tried, though where though treatments have not been through a rigorous scientific testing and appraisals process, we urge caution in using them as they may be no better than a placebo effect (a placebo effect is where a real benefit is perceived from a sham treatment, e.g. giving someone a sugar pill would cure their pain).
We work with you, your General Practitioner and sometimes specialist pain doctors closely over time to work out the best approach to set goals, meet your expectations, minimizing or freeing you of pain and giving you back the quality of life you want. The management of chronic pain is a journey, one we help you with.