24 Apr Why Medicine Speaks of Pain Management Rather Than Cures
Lone Star Pain Medicine is a Weatherford, TX clinic specializing in pain management. As a specialty, pain medicine is very much needed in this day and age. Still, accepting the realities of pain management forces us to also accept an uncomfortable reality: we are focusing on management when what we really want is a cure.
This begs an important question: why does Western medicine speak of pain management rather than cures? The question has multiple answers. All will be discussed in this post. As you read, we invite you to consider being treated here at Lone Star. If you are near the Weatherford area, don’t hesitate to make an appointment to see one of our pain management specialists.
Pain Is Extremely Complex
The starting point for understanding pain management is the reality that pain is extremely complex. It is the result of interaction between the nerves, the brain, and the rest of the body’s tissues. This interaction is more complex than the most impressive supercomputer science has ever built.
As much as we think we know about biology and physiology, pain still isn’t understood as much as we’d like. There is a lot about pain we just don’t know. Until that change is, there isn’t necessarily a cure for the root cause of a patient’s pain.
Cause or Condition
Pain’s complexity sometimes makes it difficult for doctors to figure out what is causing it. Sure, there are some easy things – like broken bones and torn ligaments – that are easily identified as the root cause of pain. Those are the types of things that can be treated with a cure in mind. But not every case of pain is that simple.
Pain can be the symptom of an underlying condition, like arthritis. It can also be a condition unto itself. This is known as nonspecific pain. A doctor acknowledges a patient’s discomfort yet cannot find a physiological reason to explain what is going on. How does one cure nonspecific pain?
Western Medicine Is Limited
The next contributing factor is one that both doctors and patients struggle with: Western medicine is limited. While it is true that we have learned a lot about biology, physiology, and medicine over the last few centuries, modern medicine cannot fix everything. It just doesn’t have that capability.
As far as chronic pain is concerned, we clinicians often find ourselves in such a scenario. We would love nothing more than to wave a magic wand and make the pain go away. Yet we are limited in what we can do.
Management Is the Next Best Thing
In the absence of a particular cure, pain management seems to be the next best thing. A pain management doctor is essentially on a mission to help patients take their lives back by minimizing pain and the disruption it causes. There are a virtually unlimited number of ways to accomplish this.
In pain medicine, writing a prescription is not a foregone conclusion. Prescription medications are sometimes appropriate. Other times, there are better ways to treat a person’s pain. Lone Star clinicians prefer to explore those possibilities before suggesting long term pain medication or invasive surgical procedures.
We include treatments like spinal cord stimulation, injection therapies, and discography on our treatment list. We feel it is our mission to assess each and every case on an individual basis, then recommend the treatment or treatments most likely to allow the patient to take their life back.
The unfortunate truth is that some cases of pain cannot be completely cured. These are cases when pain management is the next best solution.
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