Modern medicine has ranked pain as the fifth vital sign, after body temperature, respiration, pulse and blood pressure, and has raised it to a very important position. Pain is a common perceptual experience, but the nature of pain is still a mystery, and even a precise definition cannot be determined. Pain is a self-protective mechanism of the body, but excessive pain response can cause a series of physiopathological reactions in the body, which can affect work life in mild cases and lead to shock and death in severe cases.
Pain is divided into acute pain and chronic pain. Acute pain is easy to be paid attention to clinically, and it is urgent to seek medical treatment. Chronic pain is often neglected and can easily lead to the spread and aggravation of the disease.
Chronic pain is mostly caused by strain, degeneration, and chemical stimulation. The theory of chemical irritation of soft tissue damage suggests that it is a sterile inflammation of soft tissues due to acute injury sequelae or chronic strain formation that produces chronic pain. The pathology is based on optical or electron microscopic findings of capillary hyperplasia, vasodilation, stasis, lymphocyte-dominated inflammatory cell infiltration, fibrous hyperplasia degenerative swelling, erythrocyte infiltration deformation, platelet aggregation concentration, and eosinophilia in the damaged fatty connective tissue, skeletal muscle, fascia, ligament, joint capsule, and synovial tissue.
What is chronic pain.
Pain that persists or recurs over a long period of time (usually more than 3 months) and is often associated with autonomic dysfunction is called chronic pain.
The pain clinic in our hospital is a specialized clinic dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of chronic pain. The chronic pain mentioned here refers specifically to the pain referred to by soft tissue damage of the human motor system, including muscles, fascia, ligaments, joint capsule, synovial canal and internal and external fat, included in soft tissue surgery. Headache does not include intracranial occupational lesions, however, there is a high incidence of headache due to non-cranial diseases in chronic pain.
What diseases are treated in pain specialists?
The pain specialty is a specialty clinic that emerged in the 1990s for various pain-related diseases that require analgesia. The initial scope of the clinic is wide: acute pain, chronic pain, post-surgical analgesia, cancer pain treatment and so on. Nowadays, pain clinics vary greatly from place to place, but most of them focus on chronic pain treatment.
What does chronic pain include? Pain specialist refers to chronic pain, including chronic pain diseases of head, neck, shoulder, arm, back, leg and joint, including: headache (non-cranial diseases, that is, diseases outside the brain shell, except hypertension, cerebral hemorrhage, cerebral infarction, tumor, trauma, etc.), neck pain, cervical spondylosis, frozen shoulder, chest and back pain, lumbosacral pain, sciatica, trigeminal neuralgia, osteophytes, tenosynovitis, joint sprains, soft tissue injuries, gout, rheumatism, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, etc.; also includes some non-painful diseases such as: peripheral palsy, facial spasm, neurasthenia, menopausal syndrome, indeterminate statement syndrome, etc.
What is autonomic dysfunction.
The autonomic dysfunction mentioned here refers to the aseptic inflammatory reaction of the soft tissues of the neck, shoulder and lumbar hip, which produces chemical substances to stimulate the nerves, muscles and myofascia, resulting in pain, spasm and ischemia, making the vascular nerve function uncoordinated, and a series of symptoms. For example, dizziness, vertigo, tinnitus, blurred vision, head woodiness, sweaty eyes, insomnia and dreaminess, fear of cold, palpitation, chest tightness, shortness of breath, abdominal distension, hemianesthesia, and dysmenorrhea in women.
There is a difference between analgesia and pain management.
Analgesia: It is the use of certain clinical means to prevent and reduce the harm of pain to the organism in certain clinical situations, so that the pain can be reduced or disappeared to a certain extent. Analgesia is a symptomatic, curative, short-term, palliative treatment method, which is very effective for acute pain. Modulation interferes with blocking both the upstream and downstream conduction systems of pain and the central system can have an analgesic effect (the anesthetic effect of narcotic drugs is a typical example).
There are many methods of analgesia: including drugs (opiates, non-steroids, local anesthetics); acupuncture; tui-na; sound, light and electric therapy; Chinese herbal medicine, psychotherapy, etc.. However, all of them are difficult to treat the primary disease causing pain more thoroughly, and their long-term efficacy is difficult to determine.
Cure pain: chronic pain is a difficult problem to treat, and the treatment of chronic pain pursues the fundamental cure of pain. The premise of pain treatment is that we must understand and master the cause of pain, pathology and its internal rules, and then design a treatment method that conforms to the internal rules. In the case of appendicitis, for example, atropine can only temporarily relieve spasm and analgesia in the early simple stage of abdominal pain, and anti-infection with sufficient antibiotics can fundamentally cure the pain. Chronic pain in the head, neck, shoulder, arm, back, waist, leg, joint and other parts of the body has its own intrinsic law of etiology and pathology. We should not focus only on the surface pain to analgesia and think it is effective, but in short, we should not treat the headache and foot pain. We should start from curing the primary disease that causes pain, pursue the treatment of pain, work on the diagnosis, find out the cause of the original disease, treat chronic pain thoroughly from the cause, eliminate recurrence, and pursue the cure, significant effect and long-term efficacy. At present, we mainly adopt heat conduction therapy when the diagnosis is clear and the cause is clear. Surgery is the highest means of treating chronic pain and is mainly used for pain caused by soft tissue lesions in the spinal canal.
What is heat conduction therapy?
Heat conduction therapy is a better method for treating chronic pain at present, which eliminates the inflammatory response by increasing the local temperature, increases the local blood supply, and loosens the muscle spasm to achieve the treatment purpose, with thorough treatment and less recurrence. Its long-term effect is very satisfactory.
Principles of chronic pain treatment: clear diagnosis, comprehensive measures, safe and effective, etiological treatment.
Conductive heat therapy is suitable for treating those chronic pains.
1.Chronic pain caused by soft tissue damage outside the cervical or lumbar spinal canal: such as head and facial pain, neck, shoulder and arm pain, frozen shoulder, waist, hip and leg pain, sacroiliac joint pain, ischemic necrosis of the femoral head, knee pain and heel pain.
2. Clinical symptoms of vascular nerve involvement associated with soft tissue damage: hemianesthesia, chills, excessive sweating, upper or lower extremity chills, numbness, muscle atrophy, dizziness, vertigo, tinnitus, visual fuzziness, head woodiness, eye swelling, difficulty in opening mouth.
3. Signs of organ dysfunction associated with soft tissue damage: dysmenorrhea, impotence, genital pain, chest tightness, shortness of breath, palpitation and abdominal distension, abdominal pain, constipation, frequent urination, urinary urgency, weakness in urination, etc.