Pain Management

For thousands of years, doctors have been helping to relieve their patients' pain with a variety of medications and treatments. Like other areas of medicine, a new subset of doctors have become specialists in treating pain. They are focused on managing all types of pain - studying what causes it, how the body reacts to it, how different medications dull or eliminate the pain, and how other treatments can be used to relieve many painful conditions.

Chronic pain is often misunderstood, poorly defined and frequently mismanaged. Chronic Pain Syndrome (CPS) accounts for millions of days of lost productivity each year. Over the last decade CPS is becoming both better recognized and understood. The IMC offers more efficient models of management.

Medication alone may not be enough to manage certain kinds of pain. Some medicines are more effective in fighting pain when they are combined with other methods of treatment. In some cases, the patient's pain condition may respond to treatment instead of medication. In fact, for some patients, certain therapies may eventually replace the need for taking any pain medicine, or less of it, over time.