Symptom Oriented Pain Management -Author-DK Baheti-jaypee brothers
This comprehensive yet practical textbook on chronic pain management addresses pain issues as they are faced by practitioners in real life situations, covering a wide variety of topics in a succinct way.
The purpose is to provide a practical reference for the evaluation of chronic pain patients. Instead of discussing disease management, the book uses a symptom-based management approach.
The book will be most appreciated by pain fellows and physicians who see patients with chronic pain complaints on a regular basis, i.e. primary care physicians or emergency room physicians, rather than pain practitioners. The experienced authors place great emphasis on the clinical aspects of pain management.
The initial sections cover the clinical evaluation of a patient, with a discussion of imaging and electrodiagnostic studies. Common etiologies of back and neck pain are covered in detail in separate chapters. Other chapters cover common pain syndromes arising from different cancers and pain conditions such as postsurgical pain, phantom pain, CRPS, and postherpetic neuralgia. The final sections are devoted to physiotherapy, psychotherapy, and nontraditional pain management modalities. Chapters use a standard format to cover the topics in a systematic fashion in just a few pages, describing epidemiology, clinical features, pathophysiology, investigational studies needed, and evidence-based management. The initial sections on the clinical evaluation of patients (history taking and the physical exam, use of MRI, X-rays, and CT studies) are the best part of the book. No other book I have read covers these topics so wonderfully. However, it does not go in detail on procedural techniques or pharmacology. A discussion of pharmacology along the same practical lines of the rest of the book would have greatly helped this book's stature.
Overall, this is an excellent pain book full of practical evaluation and management tips. Definitely a must read for pain fellows, and many other physicians also would find it a helpful addition to their office library.
