Pain Management

A pain specialist is a physician with special training in evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of pain disorders. As a patient, you can expect your first visit at JCMG to be a comprehensive exam in which the physician will develop an individualized treatment plan specific to the cause of your pain. JCMG pain specialists also recognized the growing problem of opioid dependency in our country and are taking steps to minimize the use of opioid treatment.

Our physicians believe in a multi-disciplinary approach to both chronic and acute pain. Interventional procedures in combination with conservative treatments are utilized. We work to reduce, minimize, or even eliminate opioid medications. We strive to improve not only the intensity of the pain symptoms but also your quality of life in order to help you live your life to its fullest.

Opioid Use in Pain Management

Patients are all familiar with being asked: “On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your pain?” Over the last 20 years, treatment of pain has been a focus for health care institutions and health care providers. Unfortunately, there is much that health care providers do not know or understand about pain. Patients and health care providers often equate the treatment of pain with the prescribing of a pain medication (an opioid). Health care providers treat pain as if it were the same as high blood pressure or diabetes. The number on the pain scale is treated just like an elevated blood pressure is treated.

Due to the increased focus on treating pain, opioid type pain medication usage has increased dramatically. Medicines such as hydrocodone and oxycodone are among the most prescribed medications in the United States. As the numbers of prescriptions of these medications have increased, so have the numbers of deaths associated with these medications. Americans are now more likely to die due to an opioid-related death than due to an automobile accident. According to the CDC, opioid-related deaths have increased five-fold in women over the last 10 years.