"With Lous Heshusius as a guide, pain patients can learn much about the perils of a modern health-care odyssey. Health professionals can learn how an articulate middle-class female white patient thinks (with all that thinking entails) when her world is irreversibly altered by pain. She does not promise happy endings. Chronic pain is like that. From the rare intersection in this text between patient narrative and physician response, however, readers may construct a dialogue on pain in our time that cannot fail to bring plentiful opportunities for personal insight and professional enlightenment."—from the Foreword by David B. MorrisChronic pain, which affects 70 million people in the United States alone—more than diabetes, cancer, and heart disease combined—is a major public health issue that remains poorly understood both within the health care system and by those closest to the people it afflicts. This book examines the experience of pain in ways that could significantly improve how patients and practitioners deal with pain. It is the first volume of a new collection of titles within the acclaimed Culture and Politics of Health Care Work series called How Patients Think, intended to give voice to the concerns of patients about their own medical care and the formulation of health policy.Since surviving a near-fatal car accident, Lous Heshusius has suffered from chronic pain for more than a decade, forcing her to give up her career as a professor of education. Inside Chronic Pain, based in part on the pain journal Heshusius keeps, is a stunning memoir of a life lived in constant pain as well as an insightful and often critical account of the inadequacies of the health care system—from physicians to hospitals and health insurance companies—to understand chronic pain and treat those who suffer from it. Through her own frequently frustrating experiences, she shows how health care providers often ignore, deny, or incorrectly treat chronic pain at immense cost to both the patient and the health care system. She also offers cogent suggestions on improving the quality and outcome of chronic pain care and management, using her encounters with exceptional medical professionals as models.Inside Chronic Pain deals with pain's dramatic and destructive effects on one's sense of self and identity. It chronicles the chaos that takes place, the paralyzing effect of severe pain, the changes in personality that ensue, and the corrosive effects of severe pain on the ability to attend to day-to-day tasks. It describes how one's social life falls apart and isolation takes over. It also relates moments of happiness and beauty and describes how rooting the self in the present is crucial in managing pain. A unique feature of Inside Chronic Pain is the clinical commentary by Dr. Scott M. Fishman, president of the American Pain Foundation. Fishman has long tried to improve the lives of patients like Heshusius. His medical perspective on her very human narrative will help physicians and other clinicians better understand and treat patients with chronic pain.

Chronic pain costs the nation up to $635 billion each year in medical treatment and lost productivity. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act required the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to enlist the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in examining pain as a public health problem. In this report, the IOM offers a blueprint for action in transforming prevention, care, education, and research, with the goal of providing relief for people with pain in America. To reach the vast multitude of people with various types of pain, the nation must adopt a population-level prevention and management strategy. The IOM recommends that HHS develop a comprehensive plan with specific goals, actions, and timeframes. Better data are needed to help shape efforts, especially on the groups of people currently underdiagnosed and undertreated, and the IOM encourages federal and state agencies and private organizations to accelerate the collection of data on pain incidence, prevalence, and treatments. Because pain varies from patient to patient, healthcare providers should increasingly aim at tailoring pain care to each person's experience, and self-management of pain should be promoted. In addition, because there are major gaps in knowledge about pain across health care and society alike, the IOM recommends that federal agencies and other stakeholders redesign education programs to bridge these gaps. Pain is a major driver for visits to physicians, a major reason for taking medications, a major cause of disability, and a key factor in quality of life and productivity. Given the burden of pain in human lives, dollars, and social consequences, relieving pain should be a national priority.

This book covers a range of topics, from the cause and identity of pain, to pain relief management. Starting from the mechanism of pain, it continues to pain management techniques such as nerve blocks, drugs (pain killers), noninvasive manipulations psychological techniques and electric management, before describing the management of various painful conditions such as headaches, back pain, extremities pain, post-herpetic pain or complex regional pain syndrome. It also provides the format of case reports which can be used to explain management options. A novel feature of the book is that it provides additional insights into how clinicians involve patients in treating their own pain through guided self-assessment and self-management. Recent studies have revealed that pain is not only a biological alarm that warns of disease, but can also be the disease itself, or the catalyst of a vicious circle of pain and disease. Providing rapid pain relief is often effective in sparking the rapid recovery from various diseases. This book offers the perfect guide for all clinicians, not only those working at pain clinics but all those who have to treat patients who are in pain.

Dr. John E. Sarno's groundbreaking research on TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome) reveals how stress and other psychological factors can cause back pain-and how you can be pain free without drugs, exercise, or surgery. Dr. Sarno's program has helped thousands of patients find relief from chronic back conditions. In this New York Times bestseller, Dr. Sarno teaches you how to identify stress and other psychological factors that cause back pain and demonstrates how to heal yourself--without drugs, surgery or exercise. Find out: Why self-motivated and successful people are prone to Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS) How anxiety and repressed anger trigger muscle spasms How people condition themselves to accept back pain as inevitable With case histories and the results of in-depth mind-body research, Dr. Sarno reveals how you can recognize the emotional roots of your TMS and sever the connections between mental and physical pain...and start recovering from back pain today.

This unique resource focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of painful conditions-both acute and chronic-from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Joined by a team of nearly 200 international contributors representing a wide range of specialties, Dr. Smith presents the best management options within and across specialties. Succinct treatment and therapy guidelines enable you to quickly access clinically useful information, for both inpatient and outpatient pain management, while a 2-color format enhances readability and ease of use and highlights key concepts. And, as an Expert Consult title, it includes access to the complete contents online, fully searchable, plus links to Medline and PubMed abstracts-providing rapid, easy consultation from any computer! Includes access to the complete text online, fully searchable, plus links to Medline and PubMed abstracts-providing quick and convenient reference from anyplace with an Internet connection. Offers a cross-discipline approach to pain management for a comprehensive view of the best treatment options within and across specialties including internal medicine, gynecology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, orthopedics, and family medicine. Provides succinct treatment and therapy guidelines, enabling you to locate useful information quickly. Organizes guidance on acute and chronic therapies in a templated format, to facilitate consistent, quick-access consultation appropriate for inpatient or outpatient pain management. Features a 2-color format that enhances readability and ease of use and highlights key concepts. Your purchase entitles you to access the web site until the next edition is published, or until the current edition is no longer offered for sale by Elsevier, whichever occurs first. If the next edition is published less than one year after your purchase, you will be entitled to online access for one year from your date of purchase. Elsevier reserves the right to offer a suitable replacement product (such as a downloadable or CD-ROM-based electronic version) should access to the web site be discontinued.

Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

This comprehensive review covers the full and latest array of interventional techniques for managing chronic pain. Chapters are grouped by specific treatment modalities that include spinal interventional techniques, nonspinal and peripheral nerve blocks, sympathetic interventional techniques, soft tissue and joint injections, and implantables. Practical step-by-step and evidence-based guidance is given to each approach in order to improve the clinician's understanding. Innovative and timely, Essentials of Interventional Techniques in Managing Chronic Pain is a critical resource for anesthesiologists, neurologists, and rehabilitation and pain physicians.