A clinic at govt. hospital eases the pain of many

TNGMSSH Pain Clinic offers advanced treatments for various types of pain, emphasizing early intervention for effective relief.

Pain is often ignored. When associated with a disease or condition, addressing the pain is sometimes the last step in the treatment process. But effectively treating the pain early may help the patient in more than one way.

At the Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super Speciality Hospital (TNGMSSH), the number of patients has been steadily growing at its Pain Clinic. In one year since April 2023, the total number of outpatients has crossed the 6,000-mark. More than 800 major and minor procedures have been performed.

In fact, the Fellow of National Board (Pain Medicine) course was started here in a boost to pain medicine. Two of the four seats available in the country are offered here, according to D. Ashok Kumar, head, Department of Pain Medicine, TNGMSSH. “Here, we treat patients with two categories of pain — non-cancer pain and cancer pain. The former includes trigeminal neuralgia, occipital neuralgia, and low back pain,” he says.

For trigeminal neuralgia, in which patients experience excruciating pain in the face, doctors have turned to Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA) of the trigeminal nerve. “This is more site-specific and has less complications. RFA is the most recent and sought-after technique in pain medicine,” he explains.

The clinic also sees plenty of patients with knee pain, primarily osteoarthritis pain. “We have adopted the latest modalities that include not only RFA but also regenerative medicine (Platelet-Rich Plasma-PRP). We are performing bone marrow aspiration to regenerate broken cartilage using stem cells. We have started to do this for knee and shoulder pain as well as for sports persons; we administer PRP injections to treat ligament or cartilage injuries such as tennis elbow,” Dr. Ashok Kumar says. The State government, he says, has supplied commercial kits for PRP.

Several patients with cancer are being managed at the Pain Clinic. Among them are those with stomach, lung, bone and anal cancers. Ganglion blocks, nerve blocks, and opioid therapy are done for pain relief in cancer patients. “Take cancer of the tongue, for instance. We do maxillary and mandibular nerve blocks under image guidance,” he says.

He adds, “Our pain clinic practises evidence-based medicine which basically means that we use ultrasound, fluoroscopy, and other image guidance to treat our patients. Advanced robotic guided pain interventions are done here.”