Medical Treatment of Pain

Pain Management grew out of the field of Anesthesiology, because anesthesia has always been about controlling pain, from treating pain during surgery, to treating acute pain on the hospital wards, to treating pain during childbirth, to treating chronic pain in the outpatient clinic. Pain management has grown into a specialty of its own, now drawing from many different disciplines. Managing pain can be complex, and we are continuing to make discoveries about pain processing within the nervous system, and how interactions between the environment, genetics, gender, circumstance, and pharmacology influence the perception of pain.

Pain management has been practiced in some way in all cultures, probably since the beginning of civilization. Pain management may be based on long-held customs and beliefs, or on more recent outcome measures and technological advances. In the last 120 years or so, the field of pain management has also been plagued with the double-edged sword of the use of addictive drugs that are often very effective at treating pain. Thus, one must navigate through this field with an experienced guide, and this is what we provide at Sereno Pain Management.

 


Maia Chakerian, M.D.

Dr. Chakerian is a board-certified anesthesiologist who studied Pain Management at the University of Washington in Seattle, the birthplace of the specialty of pain management. There, she learned the skills in the multidisciplinary pain clinic that she has brought to her own private practice. She taught Pain Management and Anesthesiology at UC San Diego, and has practiced in the Bay Area since 1994.

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