For those times when a traditional medical treatment is not alleviating a patient’s pain, physicians and family practice doctors often will turn to pain clinics. Pain clinics, which treat a wide variety of pain from back pain to cancer pain as well as addiction and detox, are a resource for doctors and patients alike when the patient is not getting enough relief from options offered by the primary care physician.
Here is an overview of the main four different types of pain clinics where doctors send their patients for relief. When you read this, you will find out what types of health care service are offered at the particular pain clinic to which you might be referred.
Surgical Center
Specializing in surgeries of the spine, the surgical center pain clinics focus primarily on back or neck pain. Although it is not a remedy for chronic pain, surgical centers offer specializes surgeries. Many surgical centers, although not all, may also offer pain management care and therapies.
Interventional Pain Clinics
Anesthesiologists and physiatrists are the specialists you will find in an interventional pain clinic. You will find therapies like nerve blocks and epidural steroid injections here. Also, procedures such as implanting devices like pain pumps and spinal nerve stimulators may be available here.
Long-Term Medicinal Pain Clinics
These pain clinics have one primary objective: decreasing pain. To reach this aim, they treat the pain of the patient mostly with narcotics. Here, the focus is primarily relief of pain through medication (as opposed to finding the cause of the pain). Given the opioid addiction crisis in the United States, these clinics are disputable.
Rehabilitation Clinics
Treating patients by teaching them how to live with their pain is the main objective of these pain clinics. They treat the whole patient with different types of therapies and non-opioid medicines. These rehabilitation pain clinics have resulted in very positive outcomes for patients.
As you can see from this brief overview, the types of pain clinics are very diverse. These centers have their own area of expertise and focus. But within that purview, the most important and ultimate goal is the treatment of the individual. Alleviating pain, or learning how to manage pain so that life can return to being as normal as possible within those parameters, is the objective of pain clinics.