Living with persistent or recurring pain is physically and psychologically torturous. Moreover, the pain is not constant and can increase over time, as long-lasting intense pain lowers the pain threshold in the affected part of the body. Patients experience increasing, even unbearable pain, their quality of life and vitality deteriorate, and their family and environment are forced to share their problems.
Fortunately, the days when people were simply told “you have to learn to live with it” are gone. It is indeed possible to get rid of the pain, and the cause of the pain must be uncovered and eliminated!
Pain outpatient clinic = immediate effective pain relief
If the cause of pain is known or clearly provable, the primary task of a pain ambulance is to provide immediate pain relief. At Panoráma Polyclinic, patients receive the optimal treatment within a short time after the examination. In addition to eliminating or relieving pain, the primary goal is to restore the patient’s mobility and the nerve functions.
Thanks to the facilities of the Panoráma Polyclinic, the specialists of the Pain Outpatient Clinic can provide individualised pain therapy for acute and long-term (chronic) pain, targeting the location of pain directly. Depending on the nature of the disease, this may involve injection treatment (pain and inflammation reduction or so-called joint blockade), infusions (neuropathic cure) or special drug therapy.
Recently, these options have been complemented by more advanced, minimally invasive – with slightest surgery – pain relief interventions at Panoráma. One of these procedures is the precision nerve block injection, which involves the injection of a selected drug or combination of drugs, and the other is the radiofrequency thermoablation, a heat-mediated radiological procedure to eliminate pain-transmitting nerve fibres. In order to ensure the safety of the patient and the effectiveness of the treatment, these two delicate types of interventions are allowed to be carried out in our clinic only under the guidance of a neurosurgeon, with simultaneous image control (i.e. during the intervention we do not work blindly or from previous experience, but we see exactly where we are going with the device, controlling to the millimetre where the drug or heat treatment is delivered).
The correctly selected pain therapy can significantly reduce or even eliminate pain in a short time!
Pain outpatient clinic = teamwork
Pain therapy treatments are suitable for the longer or shorter term relief of symptoms, and there is really nothing more urgent and important for the patient suffering. However, it is easy to see that in addition to pain relief, it is necessary to discover the cause or causes of the pain and to cure the patient out of the disease that is causing the pain – otherwise the pain will inevitably return.
Sometimes there is a clear indication of an organic abnormality behind the pain, for example, painful inflammation of the kidneys. In such cases, the problem should be identified by a specialist in the area, a nephrologist, and he/she will also prescribe the appropriate therapy for the patient. If the troubled organ is cured, the cause of the pain, and therefore the physical suffering, will disappear. Unfortunately, the situation is often not that simple!
There are chronic pains with mixed symptoms that are caused by more than one disease. Examples include chest pain resulting from the combination of heart disorder and reflux disease. Disentangling these syndromes requires a real teamwork from the doctors at Panoráma Polyclinic. The specialists in charge of the Pain Outpatient Clinic involve, as necessary, specialists from other specialties in the diagnostic and therapeutic process, such as from the fields of gastroenterology and cardiology in this case, or in other cases from the area of endocrinology, nephrology, oncology, allergology, dietetics or even paediatrics.
The third large group of patients are those who arrive with so-called functional symptoms. Examples of these include a variety of diffuse joint and muscle pains (e.g. lower back, back and neck pain) and some gastroenterological complaints. In these cases, there is no detectable organic abnormality involvement in the background but the pain may be caused by a psychological problem, such as depression or anxiety disorder. Unfortunately, it also happens that the patient’s environment does not take such illnesses seriously, treating them as madness or hysteria, and the attitude is also dismissive of the patient. In fact, some parts of the healthcare system are not exempt from this attitude: patients are passed around, from one specialist practice to another, without alleviating their unbearable pain or revealing the underlying causes.
However, the causes of pain are not always purely biological, but can be partly or entirely psychological. If this is suspected, a health psychologist, a psychotherapist, a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist can be involved as soon as possible at the Pain Outpatient Clinic of Panoráma Polyclinic.
Pain outpatient clinic = effective patient pathway management
At the Pain Outpatient Clinic of Panoráma Polyclinic, according to what has been said, in some cases the specialist, in other cases the whole medical team will uncover the root of the patient’s problem. The patient saves time and money if unnecessary rounds are left out of the process. To this end, we ask the patients to describe their symptoms (or to describe their complaints online) before the first examination. Based on the assessment of symptoms, the patients can effectively begin their journey to recovery at the appropriate specialist’s appointment, only with the completion of the absolutely necessary tests.
Once the diagnosis has been made, the specialists at Panoráma Polyclinic will plan the personalised therapy in a coordinated way. Pain relief (analgesic) treatments with medication or infusion may continue to be part of the therapy, and after regaining the ability to move, a physiotherapist may be involved as necessary; in case of a functional illness, a health psychologist or psychotherapist may provide support.
The course of the patient’s follow-up is an integral part of the healing process. The patient’s rehabilitation is monitored by the pain and medical specialists at the polyclinic, and the therapy used, the administration of medication, etc., is adjusted and fine-tuned if necessary.
The goal of the specialists of the Pain Outpatient Clinic and Panoráma Polyclinic is always to eliminate the patient’s pain as soon as possible, and then, by uncovering the physical and psychological causes of the pain, the patient will start on the path of the permanent recovery, to regain his/her health and previous quality of life.
