Many people undergoing chronic pain management have a challenging time finding relief for their condition. Sometimes medication is not enough. That is why most of the latest chronic pain management outcome research is recommending a multidisciplinary team approach for better treatment outcomes. One treatment component that has helped many of my patients over the years is the interventional pain management procedures.

The goals of interventional pain management are to relieve, reduce, or manage pain and improve a patient’s overall quality of life through minimally invasive techniques specifically designed to diagnose and treat painful conditions. Interventional pain management also strives to help patients return to their everyday activities quickly and without heavy reliance on medications.

Below is a list of nine of the most common type of pain interventional procedures used in many of the leading pain clinics.

1. Epidural injections (in all areas of the spine): The use of anesthetic and steroid medications injected into the epidural space to relieve pain or diagnose a specific condition.

2. Nerve, root, and medial branch blocks: Injections done to determine if a specific spinal nerve root is the source of pain. Blocks also can be used to reduce inflammation and pain.

3. Facet joint injections: An injection used to determine if the facet joints are the source of pain. These injections can also provide pain relief.

4. Discography: An “inside” look into the discs to determine if they are the source of a patient’s pain. This procedure involves the use of a dye that is injected into a disc and then examined using x-ray or CT Scan.

5. Pulsed Radiofrequency Neurotomy (PRFN): A minimally invasive procedure that disables spinal nerves and prevents them from transmitting pain signals to the brain.

6. Rhizotomy: A procedure in which pain signals are “turned off” through the use of heated electrodes that are applied to specific nerves that carry pain signals to the brain.

7. Spinal cord stimulation: The use of electrical impulses that are used to block pain from being perceived in the brain.

8. Intrathecal pumps: A surgically implanted pump that delivers pain medications to the precise location in the spine where the pain is located.

9. Percutaneous Discectomy/Nucleoplasty: A procedure in which tissue is removed from the disc in order to decompress and relieve pressure.

A word of caution! Like any other component the interventional procedures are not a magic or quick fix. In fact, I tell my patients the role of these procedures is to help them get relief so they can start developing other long-term chronic pain management tools for the long run. For some patients these procedures are the starting point to freedom from suffering and a much better quality of life. In addition, interventional pain management physicians often include other treatments such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and lifestyle modification (such as exercise, diet, and smoking cessation) to further enhance these procedures.

To learn about significant strategic steps that you can take to improve your chronic pain management please check out my article we posted on our Addiction-Free Pain Management® website last month titled 12 Personal Action Steps for Chronic Pain & Medication Management that you can download for free on our Article page.

If you would like to see my upcoming trainings and especially to learn about my 20 hour (three days) Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training on December 7-9, 2009 in Sacramento California designed to teach treatment strategies for people living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including disorders including addiction please Click Here and scroll down to the December 7-9, 2009 for the description and how to sign up.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people undergoing chronic pain management and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders; including depression, addiction and other coexisting psychological disorders effectively; please consider my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

A new Florida law that allows for an electronic database for prescription narcotics also requires pain practitioners to register with state health authorities by early January, so rules about qualifications and the forms needed to apply must be ready well before then.

At the end of July 2009 seven doctors were appointed to a state panel aimed at controlling pill mills have only a limited time to decide how pain medicine can legally be practiced in Florida. The Florida boards of medicine and osteopathy created this joint committee to handle the rule-making, with five members from the medical board and two osteopaths. The committee must accomplish a long list of tasks rapidly if the Department of Health is to have applications for pain doctors ready by January 4, 2010.

The committee’s work will flesh out part of a new law, SB 462, signed by Gov. Charlie Crist on June 18. That’s the law that authorizes an electronic database system to monitor prescribing and dispensing of controlled drugs. The intent of this law is that addicts and drug-dealers won’t find it as easy to “doctor-shop” to collect large quantities of pills. But this program can’t be set up entirely until another source of funds—either a federal grant or a private donation—can be found.

Members of the committee from the Board of Medicine include three M.D.s - Fort Lauderdale cardiac surgeon Robert Cline, Miami pediatrician Onelia Lage and West Palm Beach dermatologist Steven Rosenberg - plus consumer member John Beebe of Pompano Beach. The two doctors of osteopathy on the committee are Allan R. Escher, an anesthesiologist from Land O’Lakes, and Bradenton family practitioner Robert McCann.

I am very concerned that only ONE pain management specialist (an anesthesiologist who may or may not be practicing chronic pain management)  is on this board that will be determining how pain management is conducted in Florida. What’s wrong with this picture? At the very least they should include a few more pain specialists on this panel. Or why not have ALL members of the panel be pain management specialists? If it were a dermatology panel would you want cardiologists and proctologists to be making dermatology decisions?

I’m sure many other states are going to be watching how this plays out. I’m blogging about this because in the end I believe that laws and processes like this are one more way that people in need of appropriate chronic pain management will be hurt.

To learn about the my views on quality chronic pain management please go to my article The Right to Quality Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

If you would like to see my upcoming trainings and especially to learn about my 20 hour (three days) Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training on December 7-9, 2009 in Sacramento California designed to teach treatment strategies for people living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including disorders including addiction please Click Here and scroll down to the December 7-9, 2009 for the description and how to sign up.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are living with chronic pain, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively, please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here. To listen to a radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

Today I found a posting on ABC Health & Wellbing - Online that explored the use of acupuncture in chronic pain management. I am posting excerpts from that online article below. To read the entire article please Click Here.

Although acupuncture has been practiced for several thousand years, scientists struggle to explain how it works. One theory suggests the needling encourages the release of endorphins natural pain killers produced by the brain) and sets off an inflammatory response that allows the body to heal itself. Another theory is that acupuncture has a powerful effect on the mind, says Cohen, which may also help to activate the body’s pain-relieving mechanisms.

Modern science also has surprisingly little to say on whether acupuncture successfully relieves pain or not. There are some high-quality studies, mainly focusing on the relief of back pain and headache but they are small – so what researchers have done is pool the results.

A 2009 review of 22 existing studies on the prevention of migraine with acupuncture found that people receiving acupuncture had fewer headaches after three to four months than those who received either no treatment or routine drug treatment. Those receiving acupuncture also had fewer undesired consequences, such as drug side-effects. Another review from the same year found that acupuncture also reduces the intensity and frequency of tension-type headaches.

For chronic lower back pain, a 2007 German study of 1162 participants found that the effectiveness of acupuncture after six months was almost twice that of conventional therapy (drugs, physical therapy and exercise). A 2009 American study of 638 people found similar results.

A recent study this year by Richard E. Harris, Ph.D., and others at the University of Michigan’s Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center has determined that acupuncture increase’s the human brain’s ability to regulate pain. The determination was made using PET scans in a study of 20 women with fibromyalgia. The women used no pain drugs during the study.

Acupuncture increased the binding availability of mu-opoid receptors (MOR) in regions of the brain that process and dampen pain signals. The increased binding of these receptors was responsible for the reduction in pain. The Research Center states that further study hopes to combine acupuncture and pain killers in a more effective and safer therapy.

To learn more about this topic please check out my News and Research Post from May 2009 titled Chronic Pain Management and Acupuncture.  After going to this link you will need to scroll down the page to that title.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.