Pain management is the treatment of pain, which seeks to prevent or reduce the negative impact of pain on quality of life. The word analgesia refers to pain relief without loss of consciousness, while anesthesia refers to its loss. Pain management often involves an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating concepts from several areas: psychology, medicine, biology (especially neuroscience), physics, chemistry, pharmacology, physiology, and others.
Pain can have a tremendous effect on your quality of life and that of your family and friends. Physicians describe chronic pain as one of the most challenging conditions to treat, so you may need to see a specialist in pain management in Falls Church. It is not only associated with discomfort and suffering but also with high economic costs.
Common Conditions that Need Pain Management
Sciatica
Sciatica is a pain that radiates from the low back and buttocks through the leg. It is often caused by irritation of the sciatic nerve, which branches from your lower spine and runs along each side of your thigh to connect with nerves in your feet.
Symptoms of sciatica include pain and numbness in one or both legs. The pain is sharp, shooting, or burning and may worsen with sitting or standing.
Disk Pain
Disk Pain is a non-specific lower back pain usually caused by straining the muscles and ligaments in the back.
Symptoms include a dull ache in one or both legs, sometimes with leg weakness and numbness. Other Symptoms include sharp pain that radiates down one or both legs, muscle spasms, and tenderness over the lower back.
Facet Joint Pain
The facet joints are located between each pair of vertebrae in your spine.
Pain from facet joint arthritis is one-sided and usually described as dull or achy. It may worsen with sitting, bending forward, or twisting. The pain can also radiate into the buttocks or down one or both legs.
Cervical Radiculopathy
The spinal cord runs down the center of your back and has protective layers of bone, cartilage, ligaments, and muscle surrounding it.
Cervical radiculopathy happens when pressure is on one or more of your cervical nerve roots, which branch off from the spine at each level in your neck, resulting in pain, numbness, or weakness in your arms.
Sacroiliac Joint Pain
The sacroiliac joints, or SI joints, connect your spine and pelvis.
Sacroiliac pain is commonly described as a deep ache in the buttock or lower back that may spread into the groin. Other symptoms include stiffness, swelling of one side of the pelvis, more pain when standing than sitting, and tenderness and muscle spasms in the muscles around the SI joints.
Lumbar Spinal Stenosis
Spinal stenosis is when the spinal canal becomes too narrow for the spinal cord and nerve roots.
Lumbar spinal stenosis symptoms include pain, numbness, pins-and-needles sensations, weakness in one or both legs, and loss of bladder or bowel control.
To summarize, pain management is the treatment of pain, which seeks to prevent or reduce the negative impact of pain on quality of life. It can help with different conditions that cause pain, including lumbar spinal stenosis, sacroiliac joint pain, cervical radiculopathy, facet joint pain, disk pain, and sciatica.