Dallas Pain Management

Dr. Haroon Rasheed, Medical Pain Management Doctor in Dallas

Pain management, also known as pain medicine, draws on many disciplines in science and the healing arts to systematically study pain, its prevention, evaluation, diagnosis and treatment, as well as the rehabilitation of painful disorders. The pain may be the result of an injury, surgical intervention, cancer or other particular cause, or may constitute the primary problem, as in neuropathic pain and headache.

In spine and musculoskeletal cases, pain management is usually distinguished from surgical treatment, and is employed as an alternative to surgery as part of an aggressive conservative care program, or after surgery to cope with residual or recalcitrant pain. Pain management and the techniques it uses also help to identify the source of neck and back pain, determine the areas to be addressed surgically, and rehabilitate the patient after surgery.

Pain management uses a wide variety of techniques to address pain and painful disorders. The scientific basis for these approaches varies from those that are completely without experimental support to those whose effectiveness has been well demonstrated in clinical trials.

Dallas Pain Management

Pain comes from the Latin word poena – meaning punishment. It is used to describe the feeling of anguish, discomfort or hurt depending on the severity of the sensation and can affect all regions of the human body. We at Pain Management of Dallas believe that pain is an individual experience and only the person experiencing it can accurately describe it.

Pain can either be:

Acute Pain – momentous and intense, and once treated, the pain usually goes away.

Chronic Pain – lasts much longer and can either be mild or severe. It could start with an injury or illness but sometimes develops a psychological dimension to it long after the physical problem heals.

Furthermore, pain can also be classified into Nociceptive, non-nociceptive and Referred pain.

Causes of Pain

Nociceptive Pain – Can be divided into somatic / visceral pain and results from the stimulation of pain receptors that are sensitive to temperature, touch and chemical agents released from body cells. Somatic pain is generally sharp and localized resulting from injury to tissue such as bones, joints, muscle, skin and ligaments. Moving the affected area usually worsens the pain.

Visceral pain is felt in the internal body organs and surrounding cavities. I.e. thoracic, abdomen and pelvic regions and usually involves sensations stemming from inflammation and ischemia (oxygen deprivation).

Non-Nociceptive Pain – is either Neuropathic or sympathetic. Neuropathic (Nerve pain) is triggered by nerves that connect the spinal cord to surrounding tissues ( peripheral nervous system) or the brain via the central nervous system (CNS). Pain is caused in the following ways:

• Nerve degeneration as in cases dealing with multiple sclerosis and strokes
• Pinched nerves- pressure applied on the nerve causing conditions such as carpal tunnel & tennis elbow
• Slipped discs that cause nerve inflammation
• Infections such as shingles that directly affect the nerves

Note: there are no pain receptors; instead the brain reacts by triggering a pain response when the nerve signaling pathway is affected.

Sympathetic pain is experienced when the nerves surrounding a soft tissue become injured, causing them to fire random and abnormal signals to the brain.

Referred Pain

Pain is felt near or at a distance from the injury site. For example, a heart attack may cause pain in shoulder, back or neck regions rather than chest area.

How We Measure Pain

At the pain management clinic of Dallas, our highly trained Dallas doctors’ use a numerical and verbal descriptive rating scale to help measure any changes in pain, and response to treatment.

Numerical Scale

What kind of pain do you feel now?

• 0 … 1 … 2 … 3 = No Pain
• 4 … 5 … 6 = Moderate Pain
• 7 … 8 … 9 … 10 = Extreme Pain

Verbal Descriptive Scale

As part of our pain management services in Dallas

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