Pain physician
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Opioids have been and continue to be used for the treatment of chronic pain. Evidence supports the notion that opioids can be safely administered in patients with chronic pain without the development of addiction or chemical dependency. However, over the past several years, concerns have arisen with respect to administration of opioids for the treatment of chronic pain, particularly non-cancer pain. ⋯ Tolerance is a necessary condition for OIH but the converse is not necessarily true. Office-based detoxification, reduction of opioid dose, opioid rotation, and the use of specific NMDA receptor antagonists are all viable treatment options for OIH. The role of sublingual buprenorphine appears to be an attractive, simple option for the treatment of OIH and is particularly advantageous for a busy interventional pain practice.
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Lumbar disc prolapse, protrusion, and extrusion account for less than 5% of all low back problems, but are the most common causes of nerve root pain and surgical interventions. The typical rationale for traditional surgery is an effort to provide more rapid relief of pain and disability. It should be noted that the majority of patients will recover with conservative management. The primary rationale for any form of surgery for disc prolapse associated with radicular pain is to relieve nerve root irritation or compression due to herniated disc material. The primary modality of treatment continues to be either open or microdiscectomy, but several alternative techniques including automated percutaneous lumbar discectomy (APLD) have been described. However, there is a paucity of evidence for all decompression techniques, specifically alternative techniques including automated and laser discectomy. ⋯ This systematic review indicated Level II-2 evidence for APLD. APLD may provide appropriate relief in properly selected patients with contained lumbar disc prolapse.
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Diagnosis is a critical component of health care. The world of diagnostic tests is highly dynamic. New tests are developed at a fast pace and technology of existing tests is continuously being improved. ⋯ Interventional techniques as a diagnostic tool in painful conditions is important due to multiple challenging clinical situations, which include the purely subjective nature of pain and underdetermined and uncertain pathophysiology in most painful spinal conditions. Precision diagnostic blocks are used to clarify these challenging clinical situations in order to determine the pathophysiology of clinical pain, the site of nociception, and the pathway of afferent neural signals. Part 5 of evidence-based medicine (EBM) in interventional pain management describes the various aspects of diagnostic accuracy studies.
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Ethical and legal considerations in pain management typically relate to 2 issues. The first refers to pain management as a human right. The second involves the nature of the patient-physician relationship as it relates to pain management. ⋯ Absent a universal duty, no universal right exists. Pursuing pain management as a fundamental human right, although laudable, may place the power of the government in the middle of the patient-physician relationship. Despite apparent altruistic motives, attempts to define pain management as a basic human right could have unintended consequences, such as nationalization of medicine to ensure provision of pain management for all patients.