Pain Management Clinic
At Pain Management Clinic, we stand ready to help treat and alleviate our patients’ physical pain – be it acute or chronic as a result of cancer or otherwise. Our team of doctors provides a type of holistic care that includes managing side-effects of cancer treatments. By selecting a course that is appropriate to the nature of the disease, level of severity, as well as each patient’s physical and psychological conditions, we work to reduce the patient’s pain until it fades away, so that the patient will be able to commence cure for the original disease and its symptoms properly.
- Our pain diagnoses and treatments include medication as well as other protocols, to alleviate the discomfort.
- Each patient can choose the course of pain management together with the hospital’s multi-disciplined medical professionals.
- Our holistic approach allows us to pay close attention to the patients’ needs and empowers them to take care of themselves with proper understanding.
- Together with each patient we construct the treatment’s goal for the patient’s chronic condition, emphasizing life style modification with the aim to allow the patient to live a quality life.
For pain management, we provide services according to the following categories:
- Acute Pain – The condition has arisen within less than 3 months. For example:
- General acute pain such as muscles pain around the body or a certain area.
- Post-Surgical Pain Syndrome such as post amputation pain syndrome.
- Chronic Pain – The patient has experienced the condition persistently for longer than 3 months. For example:
- Difficult to manage pain such as neuropathic pain, nerves pain due to injury or infection – such as shingles.
- Severe pain due to pancreatitis that requires strong pain medication or some type of nerve block procedures, etc.
- Patients with chronic pain.
- Patients suffering from vascular disease or restricted blood flow, such as diabetic lesions that have already been treated by a specialist but still cause pain.
- Cancer Pain – There are several causes for cancer pain. For example:
- Pain due to cancerous growth that puts pressure on a nerve and has spread to the bone.
- Abdominal or back pain from cancer in the upper abdomen area, such as pancreatic cancer.
- Pain caused by cancer treatment such as chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery, etc.
- We also provide guidance on palliative care, including total pain management, for patients whose cancer has spread.
- Pain management medication that includes various classes of medicine: non opioid (e.g., NSAIDs), opioids, and adjuvant analgesics.
- Pain Management Protocol
- Trigger Point Injection or Dry Needling for a case with muscle pain such as myofascial pain syndrome.
- Epidural Steroid Injection utilizing selective nerve root block and/or interlaminar techniques, allowing steroid to be injected into the area of back pain that also propagates along spinal nerves affected by the condition.
- Facet Joint Injection that introduces local anesthesia and/or steroid into a facet joint to treat pain that does not shoot down the legs.
- Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA) that converts radio frequency into heat around the tip of a needle at intervals, to help treat chronic pain – for example, when the patient responds well to facet joint injection and there is a need to extend the effect by another 6 – 12 months.
- Sympathetic Block which impedes sympathetic nervous system that affects arteries and causes sympathetically maintained pain of the limbs – for example, due to an accident.
- Neurolytic Celiac Plexus Block via an injection that eliminates autonomic nerves around celiac plexus, using neurolytic agent (e.g., 50 – 90% alcohol), for severe cases with cancer in the upper abdomen area such as pancreatic cancer.
- Intrathecal Drug Delivery Device Implantation that places a small device for delivering pain management drug directly to the spinal cord. The device is inserted under the abdominal skin and is suitable for patients who need such a high dosage of opioids medication that the drug’s side-effect may be undesirable. The device can be a fully implanted intrathecal pump or one with a reservoir that can be refilled periodically.
- Spinal Cord Stimulation through an implant of a small device that generates and directs a low current into the spinal cord, to help manage the patient’s pain. This is appropriate for cases with complex regional pain syndrome.
Pain is a condition that can be caused by cancer or other diseases. In treating the pain, the doctor will select an appropriate method according to the type, cause, and symptoms that have been thoroughly diagnosed. At the Pain Management Clinic, in advising and offering choices of pain treatment, we work together with the Bangkok Hospital’s team of multi-disciplined medical professionals to enhance our patients’ quality of life.