UW Medicine Opens Advanced Pain Clinic

09/21/2009

For a physician, treating a patient who suffers with chronic pain can be tricky. Strong opiate–based drugs can offer some relief, but often produce side effects that ultimately make them not ideal for long term use. Complementary therapies like massage and acupuncture can be helpful too. But barriers to these types of treatments can range from physician ignorance to lack of insurance coverage. Physicians and researchers at the University of Washington want to change that. They've opened the Center for Pain Relief in Seattle. The center will combine the latest research and cutting edge care to help patients and physicians find better answers for treating this debilitating problem.

Experts will tell you that pain is personal, subjective and deeply linked to a patient's state of mind. That's why everything about the UW's Center for Pain Relief is designed to help patients feel calm, relaxed and cared for. Walk in the door, you'll be greeted by soft colors and piped in music — serious pain treatment in a spa like atmosphere. Dr. Alex Cahana is a Pain Medicine chief in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at the University of Washington Medical Center. By combining the latest research and advanced technology, he says the center will be able to provide comprehensive pain care.

Cahana: "The spirit is really trying to understand the bigger picture. To lead. To lead not only on a personal level on how to promote that patient but also how to promote education at large and how to make sure that pain is treated at the same level and the same attention and with the same importance as other diseases like diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. "

This part of the center's mission is critical according to Dionetta Hudzinski. She's a pain management nurse and a faculty instructor at the Washington State University College of Nursing. Hudzinski says she sees many patients who can't get adequate pain care. Pain can be hard to detect. Sometimes X–ray's and detailed MRI scans show nothing. Physicians just throw up their hands in frustration. Other times patients are under– medicated because their doctors fear they will become addicted to powerful pain drugs.

Hudzinski: "I have one lady who probably would never think of abusing a medication who's getting one vicodin a day. And she has to choose which three hours of the day she wants to have some pain relief."

Every patient who visits the pain center fills out a detailed online questionnaire about their pain. Cahana says on average patients who are referred to his clinic have been in pain for seven years.

Cahana: "So we see patients very late. Too late. And I think that is basically the problem — that pain clinics are used as a last resort almost like a dump land and patients feel that they're being passed like bad pennies."

Cahana is hopeful that eventually the work at the clinic will help change that attitude. But for now he and his team doctors, whom he affectionately refers to as Painiacs, will focus on relieving suffering one patient at a time.

Patricia Murphy, KUOW news.

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