The European Pain Federation EFIC is made up of Chapters of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). Its Health Care Professionals look after a population of over 740 million people in its 37 member countries. European Pain Management provides a review of the organization and delivery of pain care in the 37 European countries. Leaders in the field of pain management from each country offer a chapter on how their health and pain care services are organized, the demands of their specific populations, the specific national challenges they face, and examples of innovations and advances. After this comprehensive summary, key experts in the field discuss issues that are pertinent to all the European nations; ranging from working with young people to managing opioids, and the rise of pain as a specialism. The final chapter pulls together themes from across the entire book, making a call to envision a new form of pain management for a new Europe. European Pain Management provides an authoritative summary, description, and discussion of the challenges and opportunities for improving the care of people living in pain.

This book is authored by a former faculty member of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the past president of the American Academy of Pain Management, and the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Association of America. He previously has authored three books, 33 medical textbook chapters, and 59 articles. The book addresses conceptual methods of problem solving as they are applied to medicine. This book is designed to be the freakanomics for medicine. Many research reports document that 40%-80% (or more, for certain disorders) of chronic pain patients are misdiagnosed. The leading cause of this failure is inadequate history taking and the use of the wrong medical tests. Part of this problem is the failure to recognise the specificity and sensitivity, as well as the false negative and false positive rates, of medical tests in use today. As an example, there are many articles in the literature which document that the MRI, an anatomical test, missed the detection of a damaged vertebral disc up to 78% of the time. The book explores the use of physiological tests, such as facet blocks, root blocks, peripheral nerve blocks, and provocative discograms to supplement anatomical testing. Compiled into a step-wise fashion, this book addresses the issues and provides methods to correct these problems. The techniques of history taking and the application of the correct medical tests have been proven effective, based on dramatic improvement in patients documented by outcome studies, which are validated by third parties, (not just self-reported). This book offers information based on evidence based medicine, not opinion. It provides information on how to think, not what to think.

Key features: * Provides a clear explanation for many of the pain generators in low back pain and illuminate this perplexing and ubiquitous problem. * Addresses a gap in the existing literature, as "non-specific" or mechanical lumbosacral spine pain accounts for by far most chronic spinal pain sufferers' complaints for clinicians dealing with spinal pain syndromes like general medical practitioners, and spinal specialists in various fields such as sports medicine. * Illustrates anatomical structures that can be injured and thus become responsible for causing mechanical lumbosacral spine pain, frequently, such injuries cannot be detected on sophisticated imaging such as MRI.

This book is a practical guide to the diagnosis and management of pain. Presented in a case-based approach the text begins with an introduction to pain and its pathophysiology, the next chapter discusses assessment and diagnosis of pain. The following sections provide in depth detail on the management of different categories of pain - acute, cancer-related, and non-cancer chronic pain. The final chapter covers pain management in specific situations including dysfunction related to the gastrointestinal tract, renal, hepatic, respiratory and cardiac systems, and in pregnant and breast-feeding patients, and geriatric patients. The handbook is enhanced by clinical images and tables to assist learning. Key points Practical guide to the diagnosis and management of pain Presented in a case-based approach with clinical examples Covers acute, cancer-related and non-cancer chronic pain Includes clinical images and tables