Before Your First Interventional Pain Management Appointment
Prior to your visit, we ask that we receive the following:
- Last 5 office notes from your primary physician or the physician currently treating your pain
- If you have seen a Pain Management specialist in the past, we require those records
- Any imaging films or CDS from x-rays, CT or MRI scans
- A CURRENT list of all of the medications you are taking, with dose and frequency
- Any other information which you believe could be helpful, such as PT records or prior injections/ treatments
Please obtain your previous treatment records and bring those with you to your appointment. Your treatment records offer a wealth of information to our physicians. Not only do they provide a history and timeline of your medical care, they provide insight into your condition and your level of pain, helping the OSC specialist understand what treatments or medications may have helped and which did not.
Your physician will want to know very specific details about your pain to try and find the source and then prescribe the best treatment.
Please think about the following, and write down notes to bring with you:
- How did your pain originally begin? Was it a sudden or gradual onset
- The severity of your pain using a numeric scale (0= no pain, 10= worst pain ever)
- The time(s) of day your pain is worse or better
- Activities/ movements that make your pain better or worse i.e. driving, bending, lying flat on your back
- Effect of pain on your activities of daily living, i.e. bathing, grooming, dressing, toileting, etc.
- Any associated weakness or numbness, or lack of control of bowel and bladder function related to your pain
- Do you take any medications? Do they help your pain? Relieve it wholly or partially?
- Do you try any alternative methods of relieving your pain? Heating pad? Warm bath? Massage? Acupuncture? Do these alternatives help? If so, for how long?
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