I have always thought that prevention was much more cost-effective than crisis management for any healthcare related issue but especially in pain management.  I have seen many of my patients experience unnecessary pain and suffering because they did not receive adequate pain management right away.  I ran across an online report discussing the need for better pain interventions after traumatic injuries and wanted to put some of the highlights from that report posted on Medscape Medical News below.

March 25, 2008 — Patients who have sustained a traumatic injury continued to have moderately severe pain 1 year after the injury, suggesting that better pain interventions are needed, according to the results of a study reported in the March issue of the Archives of Surgery.

“Recent studies with long-term follow-up of trauma revealed that 5 to 7 years after injury, chronic pain was present in most patients who sustained pelvic fractures and serious lower extremity injuries,” write Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH, from the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues. “Pain was an important contributor to disability in these patients and often interacted with other sequelae of trauma, such as posttraumatic stress disorder and depression, to affect functional recovery.”

This study aimed to determine the prevalence of pain in a large cohort of trauma patients 1 year after injury as well as to identify personal, injury-related, and treatment factors predicting the presence of chronic pain in these patients.

“The findings of this study suggest that interventions to decrease chronic pain in trauma patients are needed,” the study authors conclude. “The high prevalence of pain, its severity, and its effect on functioning warrant such interventions. This may consist of interventions during the acute phase of hospitalization to aggressively treat early pain and better manage neuropathic pain.”

To learn more about chronic pain management please check out our website at www.addiction-free.com and go to our Publications page and check out my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. You can also check out our Articles page to download my free article Managing Pain without Pills to learn more about nonpharmacological pain management.

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