Managing the Treatment of Chronic Pain
Chronic pain can have many causes, but the effects are the same – a deep, unremitting pain that lasts beyond the acute stage of normal pain response. Chronic pain serves no useful purpose, but persists and becomes debilitating, affecting the quality of life of millions of people worldwide. Obtaining a diagnosis can be a lengthy process because there are so many tests to run and procedures to carry out to eliminate possible causes, so patients can be crippled with pain by the time they receive any targeted treatment. By this time, pain relief has become the top priority for patients, and the prescription of opioids has been used extensively to treat intractable pain. However, with the problems of opioid abuse coming to light recently, this could...