With over 100 million Americans living with chronic pain, the field of pain management has never been busier. More individuals in this country are dealing with chronic pain than cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes combine. The numbers are staggering.

Unlike other fields of medicine, pain management continues to improve annually and the results for patients just continue to get better. The question is why and here are three reasons.

1. Pain management is a newer specialty compared to other fields. Over the last 15 to 20 years, pain management has developed into its own subspecialty and doctors can perform fellowships in the field and devote careers specific to pain management. when a field is as new relatively speaking as pain management, there is a lot of room for growth with new procedures, knowledge and medication options. In comparison, the subspecialty of total joint replacement for extremities has reached a point where the only new changes are incremental in nature, rather than game changers.

2. Comprehensive pain management practices. Pain clinics are becoming more than just an office where the doctor sees patients and writes narcotic prescriptions. often times pain management doctors incorporate both medication management and procedures into their practices. Additionally, the office also has physical therapy and or chiropractic treatment incorporated into the office. They may offer spinal decompression therapy, chiropractic, behavioral therapy, laser treatments and other modalities which incorporate both traditional treatments along with alternative options such as acupuncture.

The combination of various treatments has elevated the options for pain management and improved patient outcomes.

3. Improved technology. Pain management continues to improve with one main reason being that the technology for interventional pain management gets better every year. this may include existing technologies such as fluoroscopy which is a real-time form of x-ray.
New models have come out which have better clarity and/or take up less space and may allow for pain doctors to be more accurate with their needle or catheter placement for procedures.

The second way the technology improves with pain management is when new procedures are brought to the forefront. For instance, minimally invasive lumbar decompression is a procedure that can relieve the pain from a disc herniation without necessitating a trip to the operating room for true spine surgery.

Every year, something new comes out. Often times it is the improvements in existing technology that truly make the difference. Spinal cord stimulators for instance, have begun to see huge improvements such as with new programming and the ability to have more leads.

With these three reasons, pain management has improved tremendously over the last decade and will continue to do so over the next decade as well. Patients will benefit, and It will be quite a while before the field truly matures.

If you live in the greater Scottsdale and Phoenix metropolitan area, Arizona Pain Specialists has the premier pain management doctors in Arizona. The practice has multiple AZ pain center locations serving the whole valley including Scottsdale, Phoenix pain clinic, Glendale, Chandler, Tempe, Surprise, Goodyear, Peoria, Sun City, Ahwatukee and more.

Call (602) 507-6550 for one number easy scheduling.