Chronic Arthritis Pain

Arthritis is undoubtedly one of the most common conditions associated with various levels of pain. A tremendous amount of ongoing research has yielded treatments which greatly relieve the chronic pain with those afflicted with arthritis. There are limitations of some forms of these treatments due to side effects and the expense of medications. Sometimes the pain management physician is called upon to simply address the pain.  Let’s say for instance that a middle aged patient has rheumatoid arthritis with joint deformities. He has had a consultation with the arthritis specialist and with an orthopedic surgeon just to be thorough. There are arthritis medicines which may help stabilize the condition, but they cost over $8,000 per month and require many hundreds of dollars of lab work to monitor for serious side effects. Let’s say the patient only makes a fraction of that as income each month. He’s too young for Medicaid, and the long, involved disability process has not been started? What is to be done?

The pain management specialist considers all such relevant factors. He must try to balance the need for safe, effective patient care with the resources that are available to that specific patient. Sometimes, when all things are considered, the best solution is just to treat the pain. There are a number of available pain medicines to accomplish this goal. An NSAID, like Motrin or Naprosyn, can address pain. A short course of corticosteroids can often offer some pain relief. When the above medications been tried, it may be time to utilize chronic narcotic and non-narcotic pain medicine to manage the condition. This has to be done with skill and cooperation between the patient and the pain management specialist. There is nothing innately wrong with using daily narcotic medicine as long as care is taken to avoid development of addiction and diversion of the drug to non-problem-related areas. There are definite benefits to this type of approach to pain. Pain which is always present has an adverse effect on the psyche, often causing a chronic depression. In such a depressed state patients are not open to supplementary treatments such as physical or occupational therapy. There are many benefits to treating chronic pain including the prevention of the downward spiral of a person’s affect and self worth.