Surgical Pain Management: A Complete Guide to Implantable and Interventional Pain Therapies

Abstract

Interventional Pain Medicine is an emerging specialty, devoted to the use of interventional techniques especially implantable drug delivery system for chronic pain sufferers. This book is jointly written by three anesthesia faculty practicing pain and interventional therapy at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), a highly reputed teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. The book is the reflection of their collective experience while providing care for chronic pain patients with teaching and training interventional program.

The book is written in two segments having four chapters in Part One and twelve chapters in Part Two. The first part focuses on basics of developing a multidisciplinary team to provide an optimal care to those who require minimally surgical interventions for chronic pain. The team building among pain physicians, surgeons, nurses and palliative care team has been highlighted. This part systematically elaborates the work flow of interdisciplinary team including organization of an implant service,  anesthesia care of patients undergoing implants with all co-morbidities, psychological evaluation of chronic pain sufferers  and then their education about the implant and its care. Chapter 2 covers all aspects of patient care requiring such interventions. They generally have multiple medical problems so anesthetic consideration is vital. In addition authors emphasized that patient education about the indication and their understanding about care of such implant is utmost important as these patients are usually terminally ill or may had multiple surgeries with failed conservative management.