World Clinics - Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain: Pain Management -Author-Dwarkadas K Baheti-jaypee brothers
Evidence-based approach is the key to the success of any specialty in
medicine, so pain management cannot be an exception. In the last few
decades, significant progress has been made towards understanding the
basic and clinical science underlying the various pain syndromes. In
spite of this progress, pain remains inadequately and inappropriately
treated throughout the world. Chronic pain as a symptom (now also a
disease) has a variety of facets, which at times, make it difficult to
manage.
Chronic pain conditions are complex and require the
total dedication of physicians capable of managing these conditions with
a full appreciation of their underlying pathophysiology.
Pain
physicians often face a dilemma of how to reach correct diagnosis of a
particular symptom, such as backache, headache, neck pain, neuropathic
pain, ischemic pain, and cancer pain.
There is unacceptable
variation in clinical management of pain due to inadequate training;
distorted physician beliefs; inadequate application of pharmacological,
behavioral, interventional, and alternative methods of pain management;
and on top of it, lack of access to evidence-based approach. It can be
either at the level of pain physician or the surroundings in which
he/she is working.
