Acute pain is a sensation triggered in the nervous system to signal possible injury or alert the body of need of personal care. On the other hand, chronic pain perseveres, sending pain signals to the nervous system for a prolonged period of time.

Chronic pain may have initially occurred from a sprained back, serious infection, arthritis, cancer, and any other injury to the body during surgery, physical activity, or viral and non viral disease. If you suffer from pain, and over-the-counter medicine or any other relief treatment used has failed, you should consider consulting with a pain management physician.

Why Choose a Physiatrist?

Physiatrists are physicians that specialize in physical medicine and rehabilitation, which represents a medical subspecialty, that are specialists in diagnosing and providing aggressive, nonoperative treatments of neurological and musculoskeletal conditions. This specialty focuses on restoring function to their patients. A physiatrist’s patients include people with arthritis, tendonitis, any kind of neck/back pain, and work or sports-related injuries.

Physiatrists also treat patients with acute and chronic pain syndromes. Physiatrists are specialists in diagnosing and treating problems of themusculoskeletal system. They perform thorough histories and physicalexaminations to find the source of your pain, injury or disability. They perform EMG/NCV studies to enhance their ability to diagnosis complex cases.

Physiatrists coordinate your treatment plan. Different facets of an individualized treatment plan might include physical or occupational therapy, medications, or joint or fluoroscopic guided injections. Physiatrists coordinate and collaborate your interactions with other health care professionals. The result is a specially designed treatment program tailored for you. Physiatrists treat the whole patient, not just the patient’s symptoms.

Physiatrists share their medical knowledge to help patients understand their condition and provide the tools and resources to manage it. Through integrated focused care and comprehensive diagnosis and treatment, the physiatrists restore an individual’s functional status and add quality to their life.

If you have questions or would like to learn more about pain management,
please contact our pain management experts at
(203) 598-PAIN (7246)