Effective persistent pain management

EFFECTIVE persistent pain management treatments are not being used because doctors do not know about them or fail to refer patients to someone who does, a pain management expert has claimed.

“I call that torture by omission,” said Prof Michael Cousins of the Pain Management Research Institute at the University of Sydney in Australia.

When he started treating pain in the 1967 it was only possible to relieve 10% of post-surgery pain, cancer pain and chronic non-cancer pain.

Prof Cousins said it now possible to relieve 90% of pain after surgery to treat cancer, but only half of patients were getting the treatment to achieve that reduction.