Pain Management

What is pain management?

Pain management helps you cope with acute or chronic pain. For most acute conditions, medications like anti-inflammatory painkillers, anesthetics, and opioids control the pain. However, long-term medication use is inadvisable because of the risk of side effects and, with opioids, addiction. In addition, many drugs that work well for acute pain become less effective if you take them long-term.

Pain signals travel from your nerves to your brain. Las Vegas Neurology Center specializes in disorders affecting the nerves and brain, so the practice’s expert providers have extensive knowledge of pain and how to manage it.

When would I benefit from pain management?

Pain management is vital if you have an acute disorder or injury or undergo surgery. As soon as you start healing, you can usually change to less powerful drugs, and many people manage acute pain well with over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen.

What’s typically far more problematic is managing chronic pain — pain that persists for many months or years. Treating the underlying condition properly is vital. For example, a brain or spinal tumor causing head or back pain might require surgical removal. This approach may even resolve some forms of chronic pain, but unfortunately, many are incurable.

Currently, chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), and arthritis have no cure. But Las Vegas Neurology Center’s expertise in pain management can offer effective pain relief.

What does pain management involve?

Las Vegas Neurology Center uses proven methods to relieve pain. Your personalized treatment plan might include conservative approaches like physical and occupational therapy, with additional interventions depending on your needs. Examples include:

Medications

Medications for chronic pain aren’t restricted to the usual anti-inflammatory or opioid options. Drugs like low-dose tricyclic antidepressants and anti-seizure drugs are often very helpful for chronic nerve-related pain. If you suffer from migraine headaches, you might benefit from medications like triptans that block the brain’s pain pathways.

Steroid injections  

Many conditions where nerves become pinched, trapped, or damaged by swelling in the surrounding tissues benefit from steroid injections. Steroids are potent anti-inflammatories that can ease pain from common conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome in the wrist (median nerve compression) and sciatica (sciatic nerve compression in the lower back).

Medical Botox® injections

You might be a good candidate for Botox injections if you experience 15 or more migraines and severe headaches each month.

Call Las Vegas Neurology Center to learn more about these and other pain management treatments, or book an appointment online today.