What Is Pain?

Definition of pain
“Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.
Pain can come from any part of your body: skin, muscle, ligaments, joints, bones (nociceptive pain), injured tissue (inflammatory pain), nerves (neuropathic pain), internal organs (visceral pain) or a combination of these types of pain (mixed pain).

There are two type of pain

1. Acute pain (nociceptive pain)
Acute pain (nociceptive pain) is occurring due to much reason like injury, trauma, infection or inflammation of tissue. Many acute pain is an alarm that something going wrong in our body. It helps you to give attention at site of pain. This type of pain is relieved with simple pain killer tablets & not last for long time.
2. Chronic pain (neuropathic pain)
Chronic pain ( neuropathic pain last for long time may be weeks or months and not relived by means of rest or simple pain killer tablets. Example of this type of pain are low back ache, shoulder pain, knee pain, neck pain, trigeminal neuralgia and many more. Treatment for this type of pain required special attention and we provide this in our pain clinic.

What Is Pain Clinic?

A pain clinic is a health care facility that focuses on the diagnosis and management of chronic pain. Some specialize in specific diagnoses or in pain related to a specific region of the body. Also called pain management clinics, pain clinics often use a multidisciplinary approach to help people take an active role in managing their pain and regaining control of their life.

Pain clinics are ideal when a patient is looking at pain relief options which are minimally invasive and do not involve surgery. These treatment options are focused on relieving pain with minimal impact on life (minimal invasive procedures ) and with a short recovery time of a few hours (compared to recovery periods of 20+ days in case of surgeries)

Most of interventional pain procedures done in pain clinics are conducted under Local Anaesthesia only.

Most of procedures are Day Care Procedures.

All procedures are done with help of Live x-ray (I.I.T.V.) or sonography machine (USG).

Pain Mechanism

Pain signals normally travel from the painful part of the body along thousands of specialised nerve fibres, through the spinal cord, to the brain. However, in some cases (for example, pain after a stroke), damage to the brain or to the spinal cord itself can start the pain sensation.

Pain signals are initially processed in the spinal cord and then in the brain, where there are connections with centres associated with anxiety, emotions, sleep, appetite and memory. This creates a very personal experience of pain for each person.

The brain sends signals back to the spinal cord, which can, in turn, either reduce or increase the pain further. Cells at the nerve endings, in the spinal cord and in the brain can become over-sensitised as a result of constant pain input. This is called ‘wind-up’ and is one of the reasons why persistent pain does not go away easily, even if the cause of the pain is discovered and treated.

What Is Pain Management?

Pain management also known as “ALGOLOGY”, is a new speciality in medical faculty. In USA it becomes the 34th speciality of medicine.

In India “pain management” is a sub speciality of anaesthesiology branch. It requires a specific training in form of fellowship in pain management. World institute of pain design many course for newer doctors to train as pain physician.

There has been tremendous development in this branch over the past decade. New research has enabled us to understand the cause of pain and newer options for treatment to treat it.

Pain management consist of 3 parts :

  • Medical management
  • Interventional pain management
  • Advanced pain procedures