PAIN MANAGEMENT
We know that one of the anxieties a patient has about surgery is “how bad is it going to hurt?” At HOSH, you can rest easy knowing that controlling the pain after your surgery is a top priority of your physician. We have a skilled staff of Pain Management specialists who have a multimodal approach to pain. This approach involves using different methods and a combination of medication that have complimentary effects. Our physicians are dedicated to greatly minimizing your discomfort for an easy recovery by combining therapies that work on different parts of the pain pathway.
There are two types of pain: acute and chronic. Acute pain comes on quickly like the pain you feel immediately after an injury or surgery and is usually treatable. Chronic pain can start out as acute pain and persist over time; and can be resistant to pain medication. We believe that by using different methods to treat pain, it lowers the dosage of each medication and that reduces the risk for side effects.
METHODS OF TREATING PAIN
Nerve Block
Regional nerve blockade, or more commonly called nerve block, is a general term used to refer to the injection of local anesthetic onto or near nerves for temporary control of pain. A nerve block provides targeted pain relief to an area of your body. It prevents pain messages from traveling up the nerve pathway to your brain. If you need only a few hours of pain relief, your anesthesiologist may use a single injection of local anesthetic around the nerves related to your surgery. For longer pain relief, a catheter may be placed into the appropriate area of nerves to deliver a continuous infusion of pain medications. Nerve blocks can be used for both outpatient and inpatient procedures. Sometimes your anesthesiologist may even prescribe you to go home with a nerve block catheter attached to a pump that provides ongoing pain relief.
Epidural
The term epidural is often short for epidural anesthesia, a form of regional anesthesia involving injection of drugs through a catheter placed into the spine. The injection can cause both a loss of sensation and a loss of pain, by blocking the transmission of signals through nerves in or near the spinal cord.
Our goal is to keep you as comfortable as possible after surgery. We will ask you to rate your pain on a scale from zero to ten. Zero represents no pain and ten represents intolerable pain. Studies have shown this is an effective way to control pain before it becomes severe. Please let us know as soon as you feel uncomfortable – whatever the level. We will administer your medication according to your response, and the sooner it is addressed, the better. Please do not wait until the pain is unbearable. The worse the pain, the harder it is to get under control!
CONDITIONS TREATED BY PAIN MANAGEMENT
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