Low Back Pain
Low back pain (LBP) is the most common cause of pain and disability in modern society, and costs related to disorders that cause LBP amount to billions of dollars each…
PAIN MEDICINE
Neurosurgical Approaches to Pain Management
Neurosurgeons have a long history of surgically treating pain, particularly cancer pain. The notion that sectioning pain pathways could achieve pain control was first introduced by Spiller and Martin in…
Disability Assessment
Introduction Physicians dealing with the evaluation and treatment of patients with chronic painful and disabling conditions can expect to be called on from time to time to formally assess the…
Pediatric Acute Pain Management
Recognition and treatment of acute pain in children have vastly improved the care of pediatric patients. Data emphasizing the efficacy of adequate pain control and decreases in adverse neurohormonal changes…
Prediction and Prevention of Persistent Post-Surgical Pain
Chronic pain as an outcome of surgery is an area of investigation that has received increased attention over the last 15 years. Twenty years ago there were a few identified…
Electromyography and Evoked Potentials
Electrodiagnosis is a broad term that includes multiple electrodiagnostic techniques, including needle electrode examination (NEE); motor and sensory nerve conduction studies (NCSs), including late responses; and evoked potentials (EPs). Electrodiagnostic…
Postoperative Pain and Other Acute Pain Syndromes
Introduction Untreated postoperative pain can result in unwanted psychological and physiologic effects that may increase morbidity and mortality, compromise quality of recovery, and increase the incidence of chronic pain. Although…
Psychological and Behavioral Assessment
Chronic pain presents two broad challenges to proper assessment: the inherently subjective nature of pain complaints and the wide-ranging influence of chronic pain on patients’ functioning. These challenges necessitate a…
Radiologic Assessment of the Patient with Spine Pain
Imaging is a significant, but not independent, component of the multifaceted evaluation of the patient with spine or limb pain. Imaging must be interpreted in concert with the history, physical…
Psychosocial Aspects of Chronic Pain
When a patient seeks treatment from a health care provider because of a symptom such as pain, the initial focus is on the patient’s medical history and the underlying pathology—a…
