A review of comprehensive pain treatment textbooks finds no chapters dealing with muscle pain aside from sections on “Myofascial Pain Syndrome” discussing “trigger points” as the defining characteristic of syndromes with painful muscles. This points up a fundamental problem in discussing and understanding clinical muscle pain- the lack of agreed terminology to describe what is found when a painful muscle is examined. All muscle pain logically cannot be the result of trigger points. Treating every patient with tender muscles with injections will frequently result in failure to eliminate the pain. To better appreciate this lack of understanding, the history of muscle pain should be reviewed.
Read the rest of this entry
History of Muscle Pain
Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at
7:34 PM
Pain Medications in the News
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at
12:52 AM
Back pain that never goes away completely can undermine your quality of life. It can prevent you from participating in activities that bring you pleasure and security. The medications that we use to deal with the pain, while being life-savers in terms of providing relief from the suffering, expose us to potential harm.
Tylenol (acetaminophen) has been found to result in more than 40,000 cases of liver damge each year in the US. Some of these patients have died. Because of the misuse of this generally well tolerated drug, the FDA will limit its availability in combination drug products such as Percocet and Vicodin. The recommended upper limit has been 4000 mgms but will probably be reduced in the near future . A regular dose Tylenol tablet is 325 mgms, making twelve the maximum number of tablets/day. When you take the combinaton drug you may not be aware that you are ingesting the same drug as in Tylenol and inadvertently take a harmful overdose.
Read the rest of this entry
What causes my back pain?
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 at
12:49 AM
With severe back pain we frequently worry about having a herniated disc. If you have back pain and get an MRI chances are you’ll find something. At NY Hospital/Weill-Cornell, 90% of the MRIs of the low back are read as abnormal. But most back pain is diagnosed as “Idiopathic /Non-specific”, referring to sprains and strains of soft tissue such as muscle. But common soft tissue problems are not seen on the MRI so we often incorrectly assume that what we see on the image, such as disc herniaton/bulge, degenerated discs, spinal stenosis, facet arthritis, spondylolisthesis, is the cause of the pain. When we treat these “causes” we have many failures. Actually in some studies more than 50% of the back surgeries are unsuccessful leading to a new diagnosis, Failed Back Surgery Syndrome. Some clinicians recognize that muscles could be a source of the back pain and have attempted to treat the muscle that they have identified by applying pressure (palpation) to the suspected painful muscle. There are a variety of treatments that are offered. I will discuss some of them next time.
~Norman J. Marcus, MD Norman Marcus Pain Institute, New York NY “Your New York City Pain Relief Doctor”The Blog to Illuminate and Eliminate Chronic Pain
Monday, April 27th, 2009 at
11:55 PM
It is my wish to inform patients and colleagues about the possibilities of eliminating pain even when it is thought to be permanent (chronic) or require an invasive proceedure such as surgery, nerve injections, spinal cord stimulation or a morphine pump to achieve any relief.
Our story begins with the recogniton that the current standard of care doesn’t work very well. An article in the Jouranl of the American Medical Association (JAMA), in February, 2008, by Martin, Deyo, et al.. reported that even though the cost of neck and low back pain in the USA increased from $26 billion in 1997 to $86 billion in 2005, there was no improvement in treatment outcome. $86 billion is also the amount we spend on cancer.
Actually patients were reporting that they were more impaired by neck and back pain in 2005 than in 1997. It appears that the reasons that we frequently offer to explain low back pain such as herniated discs, degenerated discs, arthritis, and spinal stenosis, are frequently wrong since treating these so called causes results in no, or partial, temporary improvement. What is missing from the published diagnosis and treatment guidelines for common pain problems such as low back, neck and shoulder pain, is any approach which addresses muscles as the primary source of pain.
In future postings we will look at some reasons why muscles are ignored and what you can do about it.
~ Norman Marcus, MDNorman Marcus Pain Institute, New York NY “Your New York City Pain Relief Doctor”