Pain Medicine

Anaesthesiology & Pain Medicine

Pain management can be a simple or complex affair, depending on the type and cause of the pain. It can be acute, chronic, disease, trauma or surgery related. Pain management is a specialised field of medicine and Pain Medicine specialists are doctors who are trained in managing pain and giving relief to the patients using medications, therapy and lifestyle management plans.

Medica’s Department of Anaesthesiology & Pain Medicine provides complete pre and post surgery/procedure support to patients of Cardiology, Neurology, General Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, ENT, Orthopaedics, Urology, Paediatric Surgery, GI surgery, Oral and Maxillofacial surgery. It also provides peripheral anaesthesia services to interventional radiology, CT scan, and other diagnostic procedures, along with acute and chronic pain services, resuscitation and obstetric analgesia services.

Post Anaesthesia Recovery room (PACU) in Medica is equipped with multi-parameter monitors, patient controlled analgesia (PCA), opioid infusion pumps, anaesthesia machine and defibrillator machine for emergency requirement.

Pre-Anaesthesia Check-up (PAC): Pre-anaesthesia check-up is a basic work up for patients scheduled for surgery to ensure their medical parameters are stable and there is no risk in anaesthetising them. This helps the anaesthetist to tailor the doses to individual patient and monitor him/her during the operation, monitoring and treating as necessary the effects of the anaesthetic and the surgery. This may involve simple monitoring of the heart, blood pressure and oxygen levels, right through to provision of advanced organ support in complex cases and implement the pain relief strategy to ensure that patients are comfortable immediately following the operation.

Pain Clinic: Medica provides comprehensive pain management therapy and plan for patients depending on their status and need.

Conditions treated include:

• Musculoskeletal pain from low back
• Cervical pain
• Myofascial pain – a chronic pain disorder where pressure on certain sensitive points in your muscles causes a referred pain elsewhere in the body
• Fibromyalgia – widespread musculoskeletal pain
• Chronic post surgical pain
• Peripheral neuropathies – pain caused by damaged nerves outside the brain and spinal cord
• Phantom limb pain – a condition common for amputees, where the person feels in the limb that is no longer there
• Orofacial pain – pain in the mouth, jaw or face
• Postherpetic neuralgia – a complication of shingles, this affects the nerves and skin
• Complex regional pain – Chronic pain that usually affects a limb after an injury
• HIV related neuropathies

Painless labour

The pain of normal delivery can sometimes be unbearable. Medica’s pain management services offer ‘painless delivery’ option on demand

Treatment

Advance medications, nerve ablations using Chemical Sympathectomy and Radio Frequency Ablations (RFA) are very helpful in long term relief of pain. Advanced modalities like Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS) and intrathecal pumps are implanted in patients of refractory chronic pain where other modalities have failed. Cancer pains are controlled through medication, CT/USG and C-Arm guided chemical Neurolysis and RFA with close follow-up for end of life care.

The Medica Pain Clinic is supported by experts in the fields of Rehabilitation, Orthopaedic, Neurosurgery, Neurology, Radiodiagnosis and Dietetics for a holistic approach towards alleviation of pain.