Pain Management

Pain Management is a crucially important aspect of any course of treatment undertaken by physicians. This clearly requires a thorough understanding of pain and how it operates.  Over recent years medical knowledge and understanding of pain has extended considerably and here at Complete Injury Management we ensure that we keep up to date so as to be able to offer the most effective procedures to our Las Vegas Pain Managment patients.

If you take up chiropractic or other services from CIM we will be happy to explain the pain management principles we follow.  In the meantime here are some of the key concepts involved.

(1) Firstly, to start at the beginning, what is pain? 

A typical standard dictionary definition is: “an unpleasant sensation, in varying degrees, resulting from injury disease or emotional disorder” and the IASP (International Association for the Study of Pain) defines it as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”

Pain should never be ignored of course because, at its most basic, pain is an important signal from the body to warn us of actual or potential tissue damage.

(2) Secondly, can we measure pain? 

It is difficult if not impossible to apply a universal measurement of pain because pain is always subjective. It comprises both the physiologic sensation and an emotional response to that sensation, and it varies enormously from one person to another.

When we discuss the different experiences of pain between different individuals we usually refer to pain tolerance and pain threshold. Sometimes people confuse one with the other whereas in fact they are quite different.

When we refer to pain tolerance we mean the highest degree of pain that person can tolerate, and that level varies widely between one person and another.  While one person can apparently tolerate a given level of pain quite comfortably, another person may find it totally intolerable.

On the other hand when we refer to a pain threshold we mean the lowest level at which a given stimulus is experienced as being painful. Compared to pain tolerance, a pain threshold is much more consistent between different people and so, for example, the application of a certain degree of physical pressure produces pain at a similar level in different people.

(3) How do we experience pain?

Real understanding of pain management starts with recognising that:

-        Pain comprises both psychological as well as physical components, both being important, and pain can be experienced very differently by different people.

-        Pain is experienced at different levels of severity depending upon the context.  A bump or jolt experienced while out on a gentle stroll, for example, may well appear more surprising and more severe than a similar knock on the sports field.

-        Although sufferers describe pain in terms of tissue damage – for example a sharp pain or a stabbing pain – tissue damage need not occur for real pain to be experienced.  Pain can signal the possibility of tissue damage as well as actual tissue damage. Thus the heat radiating from a hot stove and felt on the skin is experienced as painful before any physical damage occurs.

(4) So what is pain management?

As science has discovered more about pain and its treatment, Pain Management has evolved as a specialist branch of medicine which develops and applies the latest science to the relief of pain.

Doctors in the field of pain management understand the complex variety of ways in which pain can be experienced, and the precise details of treatment will vary from case to case depending on the type of pain and the circumstances involved.  Of the different factors involved one primary factor one will be the origin of the pain, which may originate directly from a source known as a primary source (like a headache, for example) or as a consequence of something else (like surgery, for example).

The goals of pain management can be summarized as to minimize pain, maximize function and ultimately to improve the quality of life.

The Complete Injury Management team works hard to provide up-to-date pain management techniques  and we can talk with you about incorporating pain management into your treatment plan.

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Same day exams and doctor appointments can be arranged and transportation can usually be provided if the auto accident occurred in Las Vegas or Henderson