What is Pain Management?

After all this time of posting information about ways to manage pain and various chronic pain issues it occurred to me that I had not posted anything to describe pain management. So in today's post I would like to describe pain management in my own words..feel free to comment because these are my thoughts.  You can only enhance what I am going to say here with anything relevant you have to contribute!

So here goes:

Pain management is a sub-specialty of medicine. The focus of pain management is to reduce pain and suffering, improve quality of life, enhance functionality and mobility--using various medical modalities.  Among these modalities are:

medications
interventional radiology
epidural injections
physical therapy
medical devices
surgery
non-medical devices
physical therapy
weight loss
exercise
diet
psychological interventions

spiritual interventions
etc.

Pain management seeks to control pain levels in a given person's situation. While there is is no guarantee that pain will be 100% eliminated 100% of the time, pain management initiatives can dramatically improve a patient's quality of life. Pain levels become tolerable, daily living becomes do-able, and people become more functional through good pain management.

So, that being said, please share your thoughts.  As I said earlier, I think people that live with chronic pain and have been through some of these interventions can really be of much help here!