Pain

Most people will feel pain at least once in their lifetimes, and that is the primary reason why they will go to the doctor. Sometimes they will feel acute pain: It will be short-lived, often a sign of injury or disease; it will most likely subside after medical care, surgery and healing. However, many others – as many as 50 million Americans by some estimates – will find no relief, and they will continue to suffer from what is called chronic pain. Chronic pain is most frequently associated with lumbar-spinal disorders, commonly known as low-back pain; headaches; fibromyalgia and other disease processes of the nervous system. If you are a chronic-pain sufferer, you may be having difficulty seeing the light at the end of the tunnel: Perhaps you are already battling with sleeplessness, hopelessness, sadness, financial hardship, and other disturbances in your business and personal relationships. You have already made the rounds of other pain-management programs, and have found no relief.

At the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the Eugene McDermott Center for Pain Management – UT Southwestern’s Pain Center – is a premier pain-management center that receives thousands of patients from a wide variety of age groups. Established through gifts from the Biological Humanics Foundation, the Center combines state-of-the-art pain management and patient care with comprehensive basic and clinical research. When patients come to this Pain Center, they will be treated as individuals, and all factors of acute or chronic pain, including psychosocial aspects which may have a real impact on their conditions, will be at the center of the way their conditions are managed.

Currently under the direction of Dr. Leland Lou, associate professor of anesthesiology and pain management, and neurology, the Center accepts patients with a diversity of pain syndromes, and offers them help in cases where other attempts to alleviate their pain have already failed. The facility includes treatments such as dedicated fluoroscopy and pulse radiofrequency, and also houses an operating room, a gym for physical therapy and rehabilitation, and accommodations for clinicians, staff, and patients. In line with UT Southwestern’s multidisciplinary, patient-centered approach to compassionate care, physicians representing many departments and divisions of the medical center will come together to discuss your condition on a regular basis, and partner with you to seek the best and most effective treatment.

At UT Southwestern, we strive to improve pain management for all hospitalized patients, by educating our residents in the latest techniques, and directing basic clinical research that can translate quickly into excellent clinical care and restored health for our patients.