Pain management

Musculoskeletal pain is the pain that affects your bones, joints, tendons, ligaments and muscles. It can be the result of an injury or a long-lasting condition such as arthritis. Our pain management team provides non-surgical pain relief options for chronic musculoskeletal and joint problems.

Neuropathic pain is a result of damage or injury to the nerves in the nervous system. In this condition, the patient often complains of a shooting, burning, tingling, pins & needles sensation, electric shock-like pain. It can be an outcome of conditions like diabetic neuropathy & migraines.

Both cancer and cancer treatment can cause chronic pain. Cancer cells as well as treatment methods like chemotherapy can cause dull, achy or burning pain. We provide several treatments such as opioid therapy, nerve blocks, radiofrequency ablation & epidural infusions to manage this pain.

CRPS is a chronic pain condition that can develop after an injury, surgery or other trauma, usually affecting an arm or leg. Along with frequent or disproportionate pain, patients may experience sensitivity, swelling, changes in skin temperature or colour, stiffness and difficulty moving the affected limb.

Back and neck pain are among the most common reasons patients come to us. They can be caused by muscle strain, disc degeneration, sciatica, spinal stenosis, facet joint problems or prolonged poor posture. We start the treatment with the least invasive effective option such as medication, physiotherapy, targeted injections or radiofrequency ablation, before considering anything more aggressive.

Chronic headaches and migraines can be very stubborn and may not respond fully to medication alone. Our pain management specialists diagnose your headache type such as migraine, tension-type, cluster or occipital neuralgia in coordination with the Neurology team. After a thorough evaluation, they offer options including BOTOX injections and occipital nerve blocks for patients who need more than conventional medicines.

Osteoarthritis and other joint conditions can cause pain that can limit your daily mobility. We offer both surgical and non-surgical pain management options including joint injections, viscosupplementation, facet joint injections and radiofrequency ablation, depending on the affected joint and underlying cause.

If the pain caused after any surgery is not controlled timely and appropriately, it can slow recovery and sometimes become chronic too. Our pain management specialists work closely with the surgical team from before the operation through discharge, using multimodal pain control, medicines and nerve blocks to keep pain managed at every stage of recovery.

Fibromyalgia is a long-term condition that causes widespread pain, fatigue and sleep disturbance. Our pain management specialists treat this condition by combining the right dosage of medication, physiotherapy, physical activity and sleep/stress management.

Orofacial pain affects the face, mouth, jaw and surrounding structures. Our pain management team, in coordination with Neurology and other specialists, evaluates and treats conditions such as trigeminal neuralgia, post-herpetic neuralgia, temporomandibular joint pain and other neuropathic facial pain through personalised treatment plans.

It is a recurring pain in the pelvic region that can have gynaecological, urological, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal or nerve-related causes. Our pain management specialists work with the relevant speciality to evaluate the possible cause and provide an individualised treatment plan.

To help you find relief, we first need to understand what you are dealing with, including the type of pain, its location, and underlying cause. Our pain management specialists may evaluate your:

• Medical and treatment history
• Location, severity and duration of pain
• Pain pattern and factors that worsen or relieve it
• Physical and neurological symptoms
• Previous treatments and their response
• Impact of pain on movement, sleep and daily activities
• Imaging reports such as X-ray, MRI or CT scans, where required
• Diagnostic nerve blocks or other tests, where appropriate

Drug therapy is usually the first line of treatment for pain management. We will first aim to alleviate your symptoms, which means reduce your pain while also treating the root cause of your condition. Drug therapy can be administered orally, through IV and transdermal routes.

Different types of injections are used to treat different types of pain. For e.g. BOTOX® injections for migraine, ultrasound or c-arm guided peripheral nerve block, joint injections for osteoarthritis, injections for frozen shoulder, plexus and ganglion blocks and sympathectomy.

Minimally invasive pain management techniques are useful in decreasing the intensity of pain and are highly effective in the long run. Common techniques include radiofrequency ablation, epidural blood patch, intrathecal opioid pumps, vertebroplasty and neuromodulation procedures.

This treatment uses controlled heat to interrupt pain signals from targeted nerves. It may help selected patients with chronic back, neck or joint pain, including facet joint arthritis. Radiofrequency ablation is usually performed as a day procedure under local anaesthesia, with relief developing over days to weeks and lasting several months or longer.

An epidural steroid injection delivers a steroid and anaesthetic into the epidural space around the spinal nerves to reduce inflammation and pain. It may be used for conditions such as disc herniation, sciatica or spinal stenosis and is generally performed under fluoroscopic guidance.

In this treatment option, an implanted device sends mild electrical pulses to the spinal cord, replacing pain signals with non-painful sensations. A trial with a temporary device may be performed to check its effectiveness before a permanent device is implanted. It is used for treating chronic neuropathic pain and frequent pain after spinal surgery that has not responded adequately to other treatments.

A surgically implanted pump delivers pain medication directly into the spinal fluid, allowing much smaller doses than oral medication and significantly reducing side effects. It can be used for severe chronic pain, including cancer-related pain, where oral medication is not providing adequate relief or causes intolerable side effects.