Pain is treatable, not always curable

Low back pain is high on the list of reasons people go to the doctor. If you figure the price of disability, time off and other related expenses, it costs about $100 billion in the United States every year.

Add in the cost associated with all the other types of pains — headaches, misery that accompanies some cancers, the post-surgery pain that won't leave — and it's daunting, says Dr. Christopher Caldwell, who completed an Anesthesia Pain Medicine Fellowship and is board-certified in neuromusculoskeletal medicine and osteopathic manipulative medicine.

Although it's not always curable, pain is treatable, if patient and health-care provider can work together.

Pain is the subject of today's Deseret Morning News/Intermountain Healthcare Hotline from 10 a.m. to noon. Caldwell and Claudia Campbell, clinical director of the Intermountain Pain Center at Cottonwood Hospital, where both work, will answer phoned-in questions. All calls are confidential.

One of the challenges with treating low back pain is that so many different things may cause it. It can result from arthritis or muscle pain, for instance.

Pain often comes in layers. "There's almost never a single cause with a simple solution," Caldwell says, so it "requires a willingness to look for and find all the different contributing factors, and then we must try to address each of them appropriately."

Some doctors simply don't have the time or the expertise to peel away the layers.

"We need to do better," Caldwell says. "Physicians are folks who've given their lives to be in a position where they can help. Pain is a very humbling thing to treat. Often we can't make it go away completely. We can manage it with exercise and by increasing our understanding of the options . . . but it's often a very frustrating thing for physicians who really want to offer lasting relief and help. Pain eludes even the specialists in finding that cure in many cases."

Often, though, it responds very well to treatment, he and Campbell agree.

The center doesn't offer surgery but will make a referral. As a profession, Caldwell says, they "don't understand very well who will and who won't benefit from surgery. We take our best shot at it, and we're getting better, but there's still a mystery to that."