Chronic Pain

Ideally, pain acts as a warning to indicate harm or potential danger to tissues in our bodies. It prevents additional harm by alerting the person to react and remove the source of pain. However, when pain persists or recurs over a prolonged period of time (more than six months), it is said to be chronic or intractable pain -- it no longer helps, but hinders, the body. Normal lifestyles are impossible or severely restricted.

Treatments
Physician s use numerous treatments when dealing with chronic pain, but the main objective is to be as safe, inexpensive, and unintrusive to the patient’s life as possible. Listed below are several treatments physician might employ.

• Modification--exercise, relaxation training, support groups.
   
• Rehabilitation--physical therapy, massage, acupuncture.
   
• Medicine--drugs, usually narcotics or various anti-inflammatory compounds.
   
• Corrective surgery--removing or modifying the condition causing the pain.
   
• Implantable therapies: spinal cord stimulation, intraspinal drug infusion--these are two site-specific treatments that block pain signals from reaching the brain.
   
• Nerve-destroying surgery--destruction of the actual nerves, or, in some cases, a portion of the spinal cord, carrying the pain messages. This non-reversible treatment is usually the "last resort."