Chronic pain patients unable to find relief through traditional treatments are sometimes referred to pain management specialists. As a specialty, pain management is intended to help people cope with pain while offering as much relief as possible. It is a form of medicine a lot of people are not familiar with.
Even chronic pain patients aren’t familiar with it when they first go to see a specialist. According to the experts at Lone Star Pain Medicine in Weatherford, TX, this means plenty of questions during that first visit. Questions are good because they lead to answers. But what do people ask?
Based on search engine statistics, here are the five big questions patients are likely to ask pain medicine specialists:
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1. Are You Just Going to Give Me an Opioid Prescription?
This appears to be the most commonly asked question among chronic pain patients. It makes sense. GPs and family doctors are internists by training. They know a little bit about a lot of things. Yet they don’t know much about managing chronic pain, so they tend to follow a path that can lead to a recommendation for prescription opioids or surgery.
People are naturally afraid of opioids. And why not? We are all very aware of the ongoing opioid crisis. Fortunately, pain management specialists turn to opioid prescriptions only as a last resort. They are more likely to try a variety of injection-based therapies, or things like radiofrequency ablation, first.
2. Can You Actually Fix What’s Broken?
Chronic pain patients are very familiar with therapies designed to mask their pain. Before they invest a considerable amount of time and money in pain medicine, they want to know if the doctor’s goal is to simply find a better way to mask without ever getting to the root of the problem.
Fortunately, learning the underlying cause of pain is one of the foundational principles of the pain management specialty. If the root cause can be fixed, an appropriate treatment will be recommended. If not, doctors usually have effective pain relief options to recommend.
3. Are You Likely to Recommend Multiple Treatments?
Some pain patients ask their doctors whether they intend to recommend multiple treatments. There is good reason for this: pain management requires a multimodal approach. Specialists tend to recommend a combination of interventional injections or blocks, non-opioid medications, physical therapy, and behavioral therapy. The goal is to treat the patient as a whole rather than just the symptom of pain.
4. Will I Need a Psychological Evaluation?
Some chronic pain patients are surprised when their specialists recommend a psychological evaluation. It is not because they think a patient’s pain is imaginary. Instead, they understand that chronic pain can change how the brain works. For instance, chronic pain tends to make a person more sensitive to all sorts of discomfort.
Certain pain management treatments require the presence of good coping skills and realistic expectations. Doctors want to make sure a patient’s mind is in the right place in order to maximize treatment benefits.
5. How is Pain Medicine Different from Physical Therapy?
Physical therapy is a very specific and well-defined practice. It is also a practice with limits. Pain medicine specialists are licensed doctors rather than just therapists. That means they can go above and beyond physical therapy’s limits.
The pain medicine specialty has grown considerably since the turn of the century. If you are seeing a pain doctor for the first time, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Your doctor has likely heard them all before and is equipped to give you the right answers.