What is chronic pain?
Chronic pain is pain that lasts longer than three months or beyond the expected timescale of the body’s healing process. Pain may occur after injury, an operation or a diagnosable illness. Pain may also occur without any identifiable cause.
Chronic pain is different to acute or short-acting pain. We are all familiar with short-acting pain that occurs following an injury, illness or operation. This pain acts as a warning system that alerts us that something is wrong. We tend to respond by protecting the painful area with rest or adapting what we do, and this is helpful as it allows the body to heal.
Once the body has gone through its healing process, this warning system is no longer needed. However, in some cases, and under certain pathophysiological conditions, pain may persist. The nervous system undergoes changes, and continues to send messages of pain, like a faulty alarm system that continues to sound off in the absence of damage. Hence, and at this stage, the pain itself turns into a pathological status rather than being a useful alarming factor.
Over time, pain can be challenging to live with and it is common that ongoing pain starts to affect areas of life such as sleep, work, social life, relationships and hobbies. This can have a negative impact on our emotional wellbeing and quality of life.
Management of chronic pain is a challenging task, and in many conditions it might not be fully curable. However, our main efforts will be directed towards alleviating patients suffering and help them restoring their normal daily life activities.
Examples of Chronic Pain Conditions
Among the common chronic pain conditions that we manage:
- Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) Therpay
- Head and neck pain including different types of headache and migraine
- Vertebral spine pain including low back pain, and neck pain
- Fibromyalgia
- Pelvic pain including endometriosis and chronic inflammatory pelvic disease
- Joints pain including shoulder, knee and hip joint pain
- Painful conditions with pregnancy including low back pain, headache and migraine
- Other painful conditions that haven’t been listed above
Available Treatment modalities
Our pain management consultants do utilize the latest and up-to-date treatment approaches for the best of our patients including, but not limited to, pharmaceutical approaches with simple and advanced paint control medications, acupuncture, intravenous medication infusion sessions (e.g. Ketamine Infusion), Botox injections, trigger points injection, joint injection, minimally invasive vertebral spine injections, radiofrequency nerve ablations and others.
