World Health Day: When pain turns from a defense mechanism to a disease

In the words of our Medical Director, Dr. Jorge Orduña “.It is well known that pain is an evolutionary protection mechanism, and it is very effective! Thanks to it, diseases such as appendicitis do not kill us, as it allows them to be diagnosed. However, there are circumstances in which pain, due to its persistence over time, ceases to have this protective mission and becomes a disease in itself, conditioning the life of the patient who suffers it. “.

This pain can be due to many factors. Undoubtedly, the deterioration of the body is one: osteoarthritis, wear of the intervertebral discs of the spine, fractures … are frequent sources of pain that if not treated in time is increasing.

Another cause is the one that has as origin the injury or alteration of a nerve (neuropathic pain), which requires specific treatments and whose relief can be complex. This is why it must be treated by a specialist in pain medicine. Other circumstances that condition pain are oncological processes, and these patients should be studied by multidisciplinary teams for their control.

Early approach

But like almost everything else in this life, early pain management is also imperative. “It has been demonstrated that the maintenance of states of intense pain has many harmful effects for the individual who suffers from it: it limits mobility, exerting deleterious effects on their physical condition, and conditions the psyche of the sufferer and their social circle, leading to situations such as anxiety and depression. That is why it is important to get relief as soon as possible, and that is why there are pain units, such as our MIVI units specialized in diagnosing and treating this type of patients promptly and without waiting lists. “Dr. Orduña assures.

Fortunately, pain management is a subspecialty that has developed at a dizzying pace. In the last decade it has gone from being a complement and, in many cases, the final step in the treatment of many patients, to being what it should really be by philosophy, the pain units. These are multidisciplinary units, made up of different health professionals such as physicians (anesthesiologists, rehabilitation specialists, neurologists, traumatologists…), physiotherapists, psychologists, podiatrists and functional recovery specialists, among many others, with more and more resources to alleviate pain as soon as possible in order to avoid more invasive and complex treatments. In addition, these units are very close to the patients, available in almost all the provincial capitals of our country.

In this sense, MIVI Salud offers cutting-edge medical treatments aimed at alleviating the pain suffered by the patient. To this end, they make use of pharmacological and interventional treatments (such as infiltrations, radiofrequency or rhizolysis), as well as regenerative medicine treatments or neurostimulation.

These treatments allow, from the origin, to improve the condition causing the pain or, sometimes, to block the transmission of the painful impulse. “Once the pain has improved, we focus on rehabilitation, for which we have the help of professionals from different areas such as rehabilitation specialists, physiotherapists and functional recovery specialists who focus on strengthening and recovering the injured area,” concludes Dr. Jorge Orduña.