MANAGING MESOTHELIOMA PAIN

While some forms of acute pain, such as those that may result from trauma caused by accident or injury, are very often either wholly, or in part, reversible, unfortunately this is not always the case.

In some cases, and as with Mesothelioma, managing pain can be a difficult and arduous task – and particular so when the severity of the disease begins to increase.

Pain Management

In many patients, pain management is most beneficial when a definitively multidisciplinary approach is followed, rather than simply relying upon one particular form of pain management treatment.

For example, the multidisciplinary approach may include the use of prescribed drugs, such as a variety of analgesics (painkillers), as well as a selection of non-pharmacologic treatments - which may include forms of physical exercise and exercise-related therapies, and even psychological therapy.

Those who practice pain management generally come from a wide variety of medical backgrounds and disciplines: neurologists, anesthesiologists, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, chiropractors, physicians and clinical psychologists can all play meaningful and significant roles in the process of helping to control and relieve chronic pain in the patient.

While a number of such practitioners are inclined to follow a definitively pharmacologic approach, others are very adept and skilled in the field of interventional pain management.

Essentially, interventional pain management can involve the injection of steroids to those affected parts of the patient’s body, the carefully regulated delivery of drugs via implanted systems, facet joint injections, and the regular use of long-lasting, powerful anesthetics.

In the very early stages, localized pain that has resulted from the effects of Mesothelioma has been lessened via such over-the-counter products as Tylenol, Advil and Aspirin.

As the disease progresses, however, the need for additional and significantly more powerful pain-relievers and managers becomes more and more essential, and may include the regular and repeated usage of such prescribed medicines as Hydromorphine, Oxycodone, Vicodin, and Fentanyl.

Epidurals

A further way of managing and relieving chronic pain in those patients with Mesothelioma is via an epidural.

An abbreviation of epidural anesthesia, this is a particular and highly specific type of regional anesthesia, in which prescribed drugs are carefully injected via a catheter into what is known as the epidural space – a particular section of the spine.

The process works by causing a distinct loss of both feeling and pain in the particular area – and does so by lessening or completely blocking the transmission of signals via the nerves that are situated either directly in, or near, the patient’s spinal-cord.