An estimated 24% of Americans experience chronic pain at any given time. Classified as pain that persists daily or almost daily for a minimum of three months, chronic pain can be debilitating if severe enough. The strange thing is that so many patients continue going back to the doctor for the same treatments, despite the fact that those treatments are not helping them feel any better.
The chronic pain issue is not just an American thing. Canadian doctors deal with their fair share of chronic pain patients as well. Many of those patients show up at their local clinics for weekly pain injections. Other patients take opioid medications daily.
One doctor in particular, Ontario’s Zameer Pirani, noticed the problem early in his career and set out to change things. He believes there is a better way to address chronic pain. One of the foundational principles of his multi-clinic practice is this: if a patient is taking an opioid prescription for years on end, the opioids are no longer relieving pain. The prescription only continues to prevent the patient from undergoing withdrawal.
Pain Identification and Stabilization
Dr. Pirani’s philosophy is one of pain identification and stabilization. The identification component is simple enough. Rather than just assuming the source of a patient’s pain, he and his team thoroughly investigate every possible angle to positively identify the problem. Once identified, the source of pain can be stabilized.
Pain management follows identification and stabilization. For example, consider a patient living with facet joint syndrome. It is a common back problem that seems to affect older people and heavy laborers. Once the condition is verified as the root cause of a person’s pain, a variety of non-prescription and non-surgical treatments can be offered.
One such treatment is known as radiofrequency ablation. It uses radio waves to form a lesion on a targeted nerve, thereby blocking pain signals from ever reaching the brain. Patients enjoy significant pain relief for 6-12 months. It worked so well that Dr. Pirani says he might see a patient once or twice per year rather than administering weekly injections.
A Different Mindset About Pain
Back here in the States, Weatherford, Texas’ Lone Star Pain Medicine takes a similar approach to treating chronic pain. Lone Star doctors are pain medicine specialists. They see their mission as twofold:
- Alleviating Pain – Pain is the dominating factor in a patient’s life. It is the whole reason a patient visits Lone Star. So first and foremost, the doctor’s goal is to help alleviate that pain as much as possible.
- Restoring Function – The second goal is to help restore function. Functional restoration is important because it does two things. It helps further alleviate the person’s pain and it improves the patient’s quality of life.
By restoring function and improving quality of life, a pain medicine specialist can help change the psychological dynamic that typifies chronic pain. They can help break the physical-mental pain cycle so that a patient can get back to what would be considered normal life. And when that happens, patients almost always tend to experience less pain.
It really is a different mindset. Treating chronic pain is not a matter of writing a prescription or recommending a surgery. It is about getting to the root cause so that it can be managed and overcome. Fortunately, there are a lot of treatment options to choose from.
Chronic pain is a serious problem in the U.S. Equally problematic is how our medical system treats it. We need a new approach. Fortunately, a growing number of doctors have taken up that cause.
