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Chronic pain is nagging, annoying, and disabling. Pain is now considered the body’s ‘5th Vital sign’. Pain lasting beyond the typical healing time is termed chronic pain beyond three months. Its occurrence is common.
Chronic Pain ranges from 11-40% in adults, about 1 in 3 senior citizens, and is the most normal symptom driving patients to doctor’s offices. The predominant chronic pains seen include low back, neck, and arthritic pains, but also does involve facial pains, migraine, neuralgias, and cancer-related pains. Dr. Gaurav Gomez who specializes in Interventional Pain Medicine & Neuro Rehabilitation, at KMC Hospital in Mangalore has suggested these 3 ways of relieving yourself from chronic pain.
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1. Intramuscular injections:
Intramuscular injections may be used instead of intravenous injections because some drugs irritate veins. Sometimes it is not easy to find the vein. It is used instead of oral delivery because some drugs are destroyed by the digestive system when you swallow them. Intramuscular injections are absorbed faster than subcutaneous injections. It is because muscle tissue has a good blood supply than tissues under your skin. Muscle tissue can also hold a larger volume of medication than subcutaneous tissue.
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2. Physiotherapy:
Physiotherapy treatment is also an effective remedy used to relieve your chronic pain. Physiotherapy may include soft tissue massage and stretching for instant relief from chronic pain and tension, joint mobilizations, acupuncture, electrotherapy, corrective exercise, posture awareness, etc.
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3. Interventional-Pain Medicine:
Interventional-Pain Medicine is well established in the West, now upcoming in India. It is the only specialized training designed to provide expertise in evaluation and pain treatment. It includes skilled injection procedures. Pain medicine with medication titration provides non-surgical, ‘minimally-invasive’ (i.e. injection procedures, only needles enter the body to deliver medication), ‘targeted’ (injection directly at the site of the problem), ‘image-guided’ (using ultrasound or X-ray machines to visualize structures while injecting) injection techniques for various conditions.