SOOTHING TOUCH: Palliative care concentrates on reducing the Severity of disease symptoms i.e, reducing the pain associated with the disease.

LIFESTYLE MANAGEMENT: Some ailments like lower back, neck and joint pain require lifestyle modification, yoga and exercises. Physiotherapy play a vital role in this kind of treatment.

INTENSIVE DRUG THERAPY: Pain killer are used for chronic pain management. This therapy is widely used for reducing severe pain particularly in the case of cancer. It also includes injections.

SURGICAL THERAPY: Surgery is adopted when a correction or repair can be made in an ailing body part to relieve pain.

DRUG DELIVERY EQIPMENT: The intrathecal pump system consists of a pump /reservoir implanted between the muscle and skin of the abdomen and a catheter that carries pain medication from the pump to the spinal cord and nerves. It offers short dosages of drugs and instant paint relief.

Pushpa Narayan | TNN

Chennai: For more than a year, Sakthi (35), a cancer pa¬tient, has been experiencing severe pain. When doctors told her that she had to undergo an operation to remove the can¬cerous tumour in her uterus, what made her shudder was the pain she would have to go through after the anaesthesia wears out.

But doctors at the Lifeline Hospitals put her in the 'ouch-free zone' - the pain manage¬ment centre—to keep her hos¬pital stay pleasant. "I have suf¬fered excruciating pain. They told me this will relieve me of not just the pain but will take me closer to cure. I remember how it was post surgery when anaesthesia wore out after the caesarean I went through two years ago," said Sakthi. "But at the pain management cen¬tre, doctors made me feel com¬fortable," she said.

With changing lifestyles and increasing obesity more professionals are approaching doctors to help overcome headaches and neck and low¬er back pain. With an increase in prevalence of diseases like chronic liver failure, cancer and stroke doctors are forced to offer palliative care. "Pain management is with drugs. Some might require corrective surgery. There are others who may not respond to normal drugs or surgery. We give spe¬cial palliative care for such pa¬tients," says Dr.Ramnarayan, consultant neurosurgeon, Malar Hospitals.

"One of the options I offer patients with complaints of disc compression is equipment that can deliver drugs directly into the spinal canal. It is placed under the skin in the patient's abdomen under local anaesthesia and a catheter is tunnelled under the spinal canal," he says. An intrathecal drug delivery equipment re¬leases low dosages of the drug as per the body's requirement. Refill is injected through the skin to the equipment.

"The benefit of this system is that even if you give pain killers for a long term, the pa¬tient does not get addicted to it, because the drug does not mix with the blood," he said.

The equipment that costs up to Rs 2 lakh is used to relieve pain in cancer patients. "Most patients believe that even if they just six months to live, they don't want to be in pain. The Central Government Health Scheme offers this equipment free of cost to pa¬tients. Insurance companies are also considering extending cover to pain management," he said.