KEM Hospital Unveils Specialized Pain Management Operation Theatre in Mumbai | Mumbai News

Mumbai: The BMC-run KEM Hospital has added a new feature: An operation theatre dedicated to pain management. A relatively new medical specialty, pain management focuses on medications, procedures, or exercises to relieve chronic pain associated with osteoarthritic knee, spinal cord, cancer, among others.
“Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional,” said professor of anaesthesiology Dr Shweta Salgaonkar, who heads the pain management programme at KEM Hospital. “Our well-equipped, dedicated setup will serve patients suffering from chronic pain—be it back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, trigger finger, herpes, migraine, trigeminal, interstitial cystitis, or cancer pain,” she said.
KEM was the first municipal hospital to set up a pain management clinic in 2011, offering procedures such as botox shots, percutaneous injections, or nerve blocks (delivering a low dose of a local anaesthetic or corticosteroid near a target nerve) in general operation theatres. However, with a growing demand for pain management, dean Dr Sangeeta Ravat and head of anaesthesiology Dr Amala Kudalkar said the specialty deserved a dedicated OT, paving the way for the inauguration of the pain management OT on Thursday.
“The burden of chronic pain is high, but very few patients get access to it,” she said. The hospital’s pain OPD sees roughly 1,000 patients every year; around 80% of them need some intervention or procedures. “Pain intervention is expensive in the private sector, while we provide it at free or nominal rates,” said a senior doctor from the hospital.
Dr Salgaonkar said patients with acute pain need comprehensive care that includes physiotherapy. However, when they are in pain, they would not be able to undergo physical therapy. So, pain management injections or procedures provide a break from the pain cycle so that the patient can be treated in a wholesome manner, she added.
Research studies have shown that less than 30% of patients in India receive pain management services. An article published in ‘The Indian Journal of Anaesthesia’ in 2017 interviewed doctors from 30 medical schools in Maharashtra and found only seven of them offered acute pain services to patients, including those who underwent surgery. “…only five out of the 30 centres provided ongoing pain education to health professionals even when the hospitals claimed to provide acute pain services,” it said.