Multimodal pain therapy
Multimodal pain therapy combines different pain therapy approaches in a common approach. It particularly involves patients with chronic pain conditions, or is intended to prevent chronification in patients at high risk of chronification. For this purpose, the patients are subjected to a seven-day to a maximum of five weeks of treatment, which is supervised by different departments.
Thus, multimodal pain therapy is composed of psychological, psychosomatic, behavioral, but also occupational therapy and internal medicine treatment approaches. The patient is thus comprehensively cared for and, in addition to the classical pain therapy, learns, among other things, coping strategies for dealing with his pain, which can have a positive effect on the pain symptoms. A multimodal pain therapy is indicated if the patient’s pain cannot be controlled in any other way, if he or she is developing increasingly severe pain, needs more medication, has to see the doctor more often and has concomitant diseases that make pain therapy more difficult. This principle has proven to be particularly effective for patients with back pain.If back pain persists for more than six weeks, it is essential to determine whether the patient could benefit from multimodal pain therapy.
Which doctors perform pain therapy?
Pain therapy is one of the four sub-areas of anesthesiology, along with emergency medicine, intensive care medicine and anesthesia. Accordingly, the therapy of chronic pain is mainly performed by anesthesiologists. Pain therapy is an integral part of the anesthesiological training and can be chosen as a specialization in the field of anesthesiology after completion of this training. Apart from that, doctors from various specialties as well as other medical professions work together in the treatment of chronic pain in the sense of the nowadays widely spread concept of multimodal pain therapy in order to develop an optimal therapy concept for the patient.
What is the procedure of an outpatient pain therapy?
The first step of an ambulant pain therapy consists of a thorough anamnesis of the pain, among other things with regard to its temporal occurrence and the frequency of pain attacks, as well as a subsequent targeted physical examination. In order to supplement the information regarding the symptoms, patients are also often asked to keep a pain diary. On the basis of this and on the basis of the diagnostics adapted to the individual complaints, a therapeutic procedure is then developed which determines the further course of action. The outpatient pain therapy is based on the principle of multimodal pain therapy, which includes drug-based pain therapy, as well as physiotherapeutic and physical measures and relaxation techniques. All this is done in cooperation with other medical specialties and professions with the aim of achieving the greatest possible freedom from pain for the patient and thus maintaining his mobility.
All articles in this series:
- Pain therapy
- WHO level scheme
- Regional anesthetic procedures
- Non-drug pain therapy
- Herbal pain therapy
- Psychological pain therapy
- Multimodal pain therapy
- What is the procedure of an inpatient pain therapy?
- What does pain therapy for fibromyalgia look like?
- What does pain therapy for cancer look like?
