You typically experience acute pain immediately after an injury or surgery. Acute pain fades away as your body heals. If pain persists beyond the expected healing period (approximately six months or more), it may be called “chronic pain.” HSS pain management physicians specialize in “interventional pain management,” which means diagnosing the cause of your pain and using a variety of treatments (or “interventions”) to aim to relieve your pain as quickly and effectively as possible.
Treatment options
Chronic pain resulting from a known mechanical problem (degenerative disease such as osteoarthritis or structural changes to the body such as a herniated disc) can often be addressed with a variety of treatments. If physical therapy and other treatments are not working and pain is affecting your quality of life, a range of interventional pain management methods may be appropriate, including:
However, the differences between types of pain are not always clear-cut.
Chronic pain of unknown etiology can be caused by a variety of musculoskeletal, neurological, or rheumatic inflammatory diseases. In most of these cases, pain relief is most effectively achieved through a multidisciplinary approach that treats both the pain and the underlying condition causing it. This may include any or all of the following:
- Physical therapy
- The Psychology of Pain or Pain Coping and Distraction Techniques
- Nonopioid analgesics
- Drugs to treat the underlying disorder
- Interventional pain management including acupuncture
Interventional Pain Management in HSS
Patients come to HSS for treatment from all over the world. Our physicians specialize in the evaluation and management of a wide range of pain conditions, whether neurological, musculoskeletal or orthopedic. The Hospital for Special Surgery’s pain management service is comprised of highly skilled interventional pain management physicians with a variety of backgrounds, including anesthesiology, neurology and analgesic medicine.
All pain management physicians at HSS complete four years of medical school, four years of residency in pain management, and then one year of additional specialty training focused on pain medicine in addition to related fields such as rehabilitation, psychiatry and radiology. Pain management physicians treat symptoms of illness such as fatigue, loss of appetite and sleep disorders to improve each patient’s quality of life. Many of these symptoms are seen as a result of chronic pain but can also be secondary to some of the medications used to treat chronic pain.
For more information on interventional pain management in HSS, please see below.
Last updated: March 27, 2024
