Listen, Relax…Heal?

Our Louis Armstrong therapists have worked closely alongside doctors and nurses. Of course, we have something to prove with music interventions, but you can’t really prove the efficacy of any medical intervention unless you’re alongside the medical team. Our team has had the advantage of working...

Poststroke Pain Treatment Options

There’s a number of treatment options that we tend to consider in patients who have central poststroke pain. The most efficacious treatment that we have is a simple medication and an old one: amitriptyline, a tricyclic antidepressant that’s been shown to be the most efficacious in patients with...

Empathy and the Patient Perspective

What I have come to realize is that as we understand that patients are truly individuals, there are many things that the standard assessment processes are not going to capture – emotional states, emotional challenges, cultural challenges, cultural differences, different external pressures that they...

Let’s Tread Carefully with Medical Marijuana

Medical marijuana is probably about one-part science and nine-parts religion at this point. We want to see that balance shift toward science. Only then are physicians’ practices, prescribers’ practices, authorizers’ practices going to be able to shift toward evidence basis. We know that the evidence...

Psychology and Pain Management

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as being both a noxious sensory and emotional experience, so psychology is actually integral to the experience of pain, but we don’t often treat it that way. I advocate for greater appreciation of the psychosocial dimensions of the...

New Insights into Fibromyalgia

The important characteristics of fibromyalgia are that this is a multifactorial pain disorder with very few physical findings. The old criteria for fibromyalgia included tender points, which was a physical finding. Fibromyalgia has become a disorder of self-report compared to a disorder associated...

Knee OA: Older Adults and Osteoarthritis

The population is aging, and osteoarthritis (OA) tends to affect older adults more, so understandably its rates are going up. The increase in obesity is another reason for the increase in rates of OA: it’s becoming a major public health issue. There’s a lot of research to understand the...

The Role(s) of the Complex Care Case Manager

Myers: Part of our role is to help dealing with the insurance companies, getting certain treatments or services approved. We’re the go between dealing with the insurance company, finding out from the doctor what they want to do with the patient as far as their treatment plan, and then we deal with...

There’s More than One Opioid Epidemic

Despite what the media and regulatory agencies and politicians say about there being an opioid epidemic, it’s not a single entity as most people would want to believe. It makes it seem as if a single action is going to solve it when in actuality it’s more than one thing, and that requires different...

Neuromusculoskeletal Pain Conditions that You’re Likely to Encounter

In the primary care setting, one of the most common reasons for somebody to visit a physician or a health practitioner will be low back pain. It’s also very common to have neck pain, to have shoulder pain, knee pain, ankle pain, etc.  Unfortunately, medical education has lagged quite a bit in terms...