Preface

During the past decade, since the publication of the first edition of Principles and Practice of Pain Management, the field of pain medicine has matured even further as a multidisciplinary specialty with a broad and informative knowledge base. This second edition seeks to capture the essentials of this knowledge in a comprehensive review of pain medicine. Since the topic of analgesia is the domain of no single discipline, the content of this book is authored by leaders who represent the many disciplines that comprise the field. One could easily write entire volumes about the topic of each of the chapters in this text, but the task of the authors and editors here was to assimilate this large body of information on pain medicine and condense it into a useful textbook of manageable size. Each chapter represents a careful distillation of theory, associated concepts, and, where applicable, clinical treatments of the subject at hand into an accessible format. For those readers seeking to expand their horizons further, the authors have prepared extensive lists of references at the end of each chapter to provide the reader with further details.

This second edition discusses the fundamental dimensions of pain, the various diseases and disorders in which pain poses a major problem, and the methods employed in its management, with special emphasis on the use of analgesic block as an aid to diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy. It covers the history of pain, its biology, and the principles of physical and psychological evaluation of chronic pain. It goes on to discuss pain categorized by anatomic location, as well as by syndromes, such as acute and perioperative pain, neuropathic pain, pain in the terminally ill, and pediatric and geriatric pain. The authors have been careful to incorporate vivid illustrations depicting the physical symptoms and anatomy of each site, as well as key imaging findings from MRI, CT, and conventional radiography. The next group of chapters discusses pain therapies and includes detailed attention to pharmacologic treatments, interventional therapies, and complementary and physical treatments for pain. Lastly, as pain medicine has now grown beyond its clinical bounds, we have introduced chapters covering the new areas of pain and law, ethics, and business administration.

The breadth and rapidity of change in this specialty has prompted the publication of this second edition to the original version, with the new edition reflecting the expansion of pain medicine with every chapter updated. We have even modified the name of the original text, Principles and Practice of Pain Management, to Principles and Practice of Pain Medicine as the specialty has matured to develop its own identity in the panopoly of medical practice. We have also attempted to be comprehensive in our consideration of pain medicine from a multidisciplinary perspective, with the idea that, regardless of the reader's background and training—whether anesthesiology, neurology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, neurosurgery, psychology, or other specialties—a picture of pain medicine as a multifaceted and continually evolving field emerges as with the first edition. We welcome comments, suggestions, and constructive criticism from all our readers.