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Overview

There are many individual and changing ways to treat pain.  Each patient has different objectives and outcome expectations and finding a clinic that can help can be important in achieving the desired outcome. Commonwealth Pain Physicians use medications, minimally invasive techniques and procedures as well as blocks and injections to facilitate treatment based on objective diagnostic criteria in order to develop a plan of care.  We call this individual plan of care the Pain—Personalized Care Plan or P—PCP™. 

Indications

Patients who have had pain for usually longer than three months from the same source or in the same region can be said to have chronic pain. This may due to injury, surgery, trauma, or no identifiable source. Chronic pain sources can be treated by various means in order to help control the pain and keep the process of pain management moving forward. Patients who have pain that is causing them difficulty with functioning daily in life can also be good candidates for pain management. These may be conditions that are chronic, intermittently painful, but cause the person to have to manage and deal with pain daily in order to get through the normal activity of day to day living.

What to Expect

Patients can expect to have some type of evaluation of the cause and generator of the pain done. It may include a physical exam, a history of the process and health conditions of the patient, and may need to have review of prior treatments and medications. Also, an objective diagnostic study may be done or reviewed if recent, such as CT or MRI scan of the suspected pain generation area. This can be ordered after the evaluation to help confirm the findings and suspected generation of pain based the prior evaluation. A treatment plan can be formulated at some point and the expected and reasonable outcomes of pain management discussed. Not every situation can be improved upon and simply because something done prior was not successful does not mean it would not be appropriate at a different time in the plan of care.  There are many different conditions and different treatments can be suggested and used to help with both improved outcome, function and diagnosis.

Outcomes

Outcomes for pain management are as varied and individual as the patients that have pain, as all people respond differently to the various management techniques. A reasonable goal for the patient is determined between the physician and the patient and a course of therapy set upon, which needs to be monitored and reevaluated frequently in order to achieve the best overall outcome for the individual patient. That is why a Personalized and Tailored approach to pain management has the best opportunity to achieve a satisfactory outcome for patients.