The Role of Pain Management in Southern Indiana
Baptist Health Floyd: The Role of Pain Management
Pain management can help control various levels of chronic pain and improve quality of life. Learn more about pain management at Baptist Health.
The Role of Pain Management in Southern Indiana HealthTalks Transcript
William Bickers, MD, Pain Management:
The primary role of pain management is to evaluate and treat patients in different stages of pain and different stages of life, in order to provide them a decreased level of pain and improve their overall functionality. The type of patients we see, primarily, are chronic pain patients. When I say chronic pain, I mean somebody who has had some form of pain for a prolonged period of time.
Typically, this involves back pain, neck pain or joint pain. We’re trying to treat pain all the way from the head and neck, down to the feet — a holistic-type approach. The field of pain management is evolving very fast and is making significant advances in what we could do even just a couple of years ago. People tend to think about pain management in the past, where we would often provide narcotic pain medications to help treat pain. Now, we have the opportunity to perform advanced injections, as well as do outpatient surgical procedures. We can do implants and simulators and help to treat not just the cause of the pain, but treat the symptoms without the side effects of the medication.
When a patient who has a significant level of pain comes into my care, I’m able to offer them therapy. They come back to me several weeks or a month or two later, and they’re back doing the things that they enjoy doing, it’s very rewarding and satisfying.