Yes a lot of patients are able to live a normal life with the medications and that’s the whole point of the medications. When we prescribe a medication for chronic pain what we’re looking for is to have any increase in the functionality and/or a decrease in the overall pain level so if we provide…
We have a variety of reasons why there are certain days where your pain may be worse. Maybe because you had extra physical activity the same day or the day before, maybe weather changes or maybe just a progression of the disease. Oftentimes people on chronic pain will have a certain baseline of medication and…
Oftentimes the answer is no. When we have people come in that have been in pain for say 5,10 or 15 years we go through their physical examination and their history, their previous treatment modalities, and we’re able to find the various things that they haven’t been able to use or have not used thus…
The reason some people need to take more medication for the same effect is because you can become tolerant to the medications. If your body consistently sees the medication on a daily basis what it does is it stops reacting as it did before so for the same amount of medication you may have less…
It depends on the type of medications, so some pain medications can be considered rescue medications another can be considered preventive medications so if someone is in chronic pain around the clock then what we typically do is we start them on a pain medication that may last 8-12 hours so you wouldn’t want to…
It’s very unlikely to become addicted to narcotic pain medication. There is a very small sub-set of patients that will unfortunately become addicted to these medications just like any other vice weather it would be tobacco, alcohol or gambling or other things like that. We do keep a very close eye on patients. We do…
So as pain management specialist we take care of people that are in acute or chronic pain. Acute pain may be anything from post-surgical pain to an acute injury on a soccer field, at work or with a motor vehicle accident. Chronic pain may be that associated with pain that’s been longer than about 3…
Oftentimes the answer to that maybe two folded. One may be that your disease may be progressing so if a particular type of pain medication or particular dose of medication may no longer be effective because your disease has progressed into something worse. The other possibility, oftentimes it happens specifically with opiate medications is that…
Primary care physicians can prescribe pain medications but oftentimes when it gets to a certain dose or a certain frequency they may leave it up to us as professional pain management physicians to actually incorporate the medication management. The reason for this is that high dose medication management or frequent medication management can lead to…
No, back pain surgery is not inevitable. Let’s say we have 1,000 people that come in pain probably about I’d say 80% of those may be able to get better with medication, with therapies and with time. 20% of those that are left with some residual pain may get better with injection therapies and only…