Patients may be afflicted with severe, chronic painful conditions that are refractory to the usual conservative pain relief measures. Increasing the strength of narcotics may no longer provide relief and often only enhances the unwanted side effects. Those patients for whom further corrective surgery is no longer an option, may benefit from recent developments in pain management.

Better understanding of pain mechanisms and the availability of new technology has led to more sophisticated approaches to pain management. Careful assessment and selection of patients (usually through a coordinated, multidisciplinary approach in the setting of a pain center) is crucial to a beneficial outcome.

Procedures offering potential benefits for intractable pain are :   

• Spinal Cord Stimulator
• Intrathecal Drug Pump

• Epidural Steroid Injection (ESI)
• Facet Joint Injection
• Trigger Point Injection