Killing pain without painkillers

AHMEDABAD: Pain management or algiatry is an emerging field of medicine. It involves a multidisciplinary approach to improve the lives of those suffering pain. The developments in this discipline has led to the establishment of several pain management centres in the city, however a valid certification does not exist for this outside the US.
NRG pain management expert Dr Vikram Patel is now making an effort to bring pain management to Gujarat.Patel recently held a four-day clinic as well as seminars for doctors in Ahmedabad and Surat on the subject. His next aim is to begin a fellowship programme in pain management in Gujarat. “The idea is to certify doctors in pain management so that the best possible way to reduce a patient’s suffering is taken. Pain management involves not just treatment of a particular disease but the optimal treatment for pain itself focused on the individual. For example if an interventional technique can take away a patient’s pain from an arthriti c spine, t h i s must b e done. Sometimes the treatment for arthritis itself may not be necessary,” says Patel.
“We are in talks with health minister Jay Narayan Vyas to see if we can start a pain management fellowship programme in the state,” Patel says.
“My motto is very simple - to reduce pain in the world,” says Patel who was born in Ahmedabad in 1959. Patel studied at Best High School, Maninagar. He began his MMBS in 1978 and did his MD in anesthesiology in 1984 from BJ Medical.
He moved to the US after that and did his residency at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo. Later he enrolled in the pain fellowship at the same institute and went on to become director of the pain practice programme.
Patel is renowned as an expert and is also a fellow and an examiner for the World Institute of Pain Practice and visiting faculty at many top medical institutes like Beth Israel, Cornell University etc in the US. He has his own practice in Chicago and has authored several papers and is a reviewer for ‘Pain Practice’, the discipline’s official journal.
Patel says that pain management can also help to manage dependency on painkillers. In the US such dependency on painkillers is a big problem. After treatment people become physically and sometimes psychologically dependant on painkillers. This has reached such a stage where 80 % of the world's medical narcotics like opiates are used in the country. “This is not as bad a problem in India where opiates are less available,” says Patel.
“When studying, I preferred things that can be done by my own hands, like dissections. So I became an interventional pain physician. Although pain management includes many different approaches, my work in particular is to kill pain without painkillers,” says he.