Wol+Med Work and Auto Injury Experts

Do you live in constant chronic pain on any given day?

If so, it’s safe to say that you could benefit from pain management. However, knowing that you can benefit from it and knowing which techniques you should use to alleviate your pain are two different stories.

Pain management is defined as everything from physical therapy, exercise and mental-health counseling to surgery and medication. With so many different choices, it’s easy to get confused as to which one is your best option. While the purpose of this article isn’t to try and name the best option, it can inform you of the different types of Pain Management techniques available.

While there are no universally accepted classifications, pain management techniques generally fall into two different categories: invasive and non-invasive. Non-invasive pain management techniques are activities such as exercise and physical therapy.

Pain management techniques such as medications, fall into both invasive and non-invasive categories depending on how the medications are introduced into the body. Techniques such as injections and surgery are always considered invasive.

Listed below are the several different types of invasive and non-invasive techniques available.

Non-Invasive Techniques

• Exercise: Exercises may involve active, passive, and resistive exercises to provide proper cardiovascular health and muscle strengthening

• Manual techniques: Chiropractic adjustments, massage therapy, and osteopathy are some of the techniques used to manually manipulate affected areas

• Cutaneous stimulation: Usually used with exercise, involves superficial heating or cooling of the skin using hot or cold packs

• Behavioral modification: A cognitive therapy that teaches the patient to alleviate pain by means of relaxation, coping or other techniques

• Medications: Medications that are introduced into the body orally such as Analgesics, NSAID’s, Muscle relaxants, narcotic medications, and antidepressants

• Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS): TENS is a battery powered device that sends an electrical signals to underlying nerves to help relieve acute or chronic pain

Invasive Techniques

• Injections: Injecting steroids or anesthetics to nerves, joints or through epidural injections can provide temporary relief for severe pain.

• Proliferation therapy: Injection of a solution that stimulates blood circulation to aid in ligament repair at the affected site.

• Surgical Implants: Surgically implantable spinal cord stimulators and implantable peripheral nerve stimulators.

• Infusion pumps: Implantable pumps that deliver opioids directly to the affected nerve.

While this list isn’t comprehensive and doesn’t cover every possible pain management technique there is, it gives you an idea of what’s avaliable to help alleviate your chronic pain. Remember you should always consult a pain management professional and find out which one is best for you.