Pain Medicine (Chronic Pain Treatment)

Pain medicine, sometimes called algology, is the specialty that assesses and treats pain lasting longer than about 3 months, as well as difficult acute and cancer pain. A pain clinic combines a pain physician with physiotherapists and psychologists, because chronic pain involves the nervous system, movement and mood together.

The realistic aim is usually less pain and a fuller life, not zero pain. Treatments work best in combination: education, graded activity, carefully chosen medicines and, for some people, injections. Long-term opioids are generally avoided for non-cancer pain because harms tend to outweigh benefits.

Conditions this service looks after

• Chronic low back and neck pain
• Sciatica and other nerve root pain
• Neuropathic pain, including diabetic neuropathy and pain after shingles
• Osteoarthritis pain
• Fibromyalgia and widespread pain
• Chronic headache and facial pain, including trigeminal neuralgia
• Persistent pain after surgery
• Complex regional pain syndrome
• Cancer pain
• Chronic pelvic pain

Tests you may be offered

• Pain history and examination: Maps the pain, its behaviour, its effect on sleep, mood and work, and previous treatments.
• Validated questionnaires: Screen for neuropathic features, disability, anxiety and depression.
• Review of imaging: MRI and X-ray findings are matched to symptoms, since many age-related changes are painless.
• Nerve conduction studies and EMG: Used when nerve damage or entrapment is suspected.
• Diagnostic nerve blocks: Small test injections that show whether a particular joint or nerve is the source.

Treatments available

• Pain education and self-management: Understanding how chronic pain works reduces fear and improves activity levels.
• Exercise-based physiotherapy: Graded, paced activity has some of the strongest evidence in chronic back pain and fibromyalgia.
• Medicines: Anti-inflammatories for short periods; duloxetine, amitriptyline, gabapentin or pregabalin for nerve pain; topical lidocaine or capsaicin.
• Psychological therapy: Cognitive behavioural and acceptance-based therapy improve coping, mood and function.
• Interventional procedures: Epidural injections, radiofrequency ablation and nerve blocks for defined pain sources.
• Neuromodulation: Spinal cord stimulation for selected neuropathic pain.
• Cancer pain and palliative measures: Stepwise opioid therapy, nerve blocks and intrathecal pumps.

When to ask for a specialist opinion

• Pain has persisted beyond 3 months despite treatment from your doctor
• Pain prevents sleep, work or normal activity
• You rely on increasing doses of painkillers, especially opioids
• Burning, shooting or electric pain suggests nerve involvement
• You have been offered surgery mainly for pain and want to explore alternatives

Travelling to Türkiye for this care

A pain clinic visit of 3 to 7 days can provide a full assessment, review of your scans, a medication plan and, where appropriate, an image-guided procedure. That is worthwhile if you have had no clear diagnosis or no access to such procedures. What travel cannot supply is the backbone of chronic pain care: months of graded exercise, psychological work and medication adjustment, which need a team you can see regularly. Psychological therapy in particular needs your own language. Take a written plan home to your doctor, and treat new severe pain with weakness, numbness in the saddle area or bladder changes as a local emergency.

Send your reports, scans and a short history and a Clinic-Y coordinator replies within 24 hours with suitable teams and written, all-inclusive proposals side by side. Reviewing your case is free.

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