In the century of science and technology, the average life span has increased, bringing with it an increase in the incidence of degenerative and cancer disease. Intractable pain is usually the main symptom of cancer. With the advancement in technology, there is a large group of patients with intractable pain problems who can benefit from special help medically or surgically. Destructive pain pr...

Headaches and facial pain can be extremely difficult to manage for the patient and the clinician. In the medical literature, it has been suggested that the autonomic reflex plays an important role in the pathophysiology of facial neuralgia. The sphenopalatine ganglion is the largest parasympathetic ganglion outside the cranium. It is an easy accessible target for pain management. The applicatio...

Despite tremendous progress in medicine during last couple of decades, cancer still remains the most horrifying diagnosis for anybody due to its almost inevitable futility. According to American Cancer Society Statistics, it is estimated that only in the United States more than half a million people will die from cancer in 2006. For those who survive, probably the most fearsome symptom regardle...

Despite recent methodological advancement of the practical pain medicine, many cases of the chronic anorectal pain have been intractable. A 54-year-old female patient who had a month history of a constant severe anorectal pain was referred to our clinic for further management. No organic or functional pathology was found. In spite of several modalities of management, such as medications and ner...

Neuropathic pain includes postherpetic neuralgia (PHN), painful diabetic neuropathy (PDN), and trigeminal neuralgia, and so on. Although various drugs have been tried to treat neuropathic pain, the effectiveness of the drugs sometimes may be limited for chronic intractable neuropathic pain, especially when they cannot be used at an adequate dose, due to undesirable severe side effects and the u...

Ilioinguinal and iliohypogastric (II/IH) nerve injury is one of the most common nerve injuries following pelvic surgery, especially with the Pfannenstiel incision. We present a case of intractable groin pain, successfully treated with a continuous II/IH nerve block. A 33-year-old woman, following emergency cesarean section due to cephalopelvic disproportion, presented numbness in left inguinal ...

OBJECTIVE Up to 90% of patients with advanced cancer experience intractable pain. For these patients, oral analgesics are the mainstay of therapy, often augmented with intrathecal drug delivery. Neurosurgical ablative procedures have become less commonly used, though their efficacy has been well-established. Unfortunately, little is known about the safety of ablation in the context of previous ...

In an increasingly 'patient-centred' health service individuals are demanding to make independent judgements about their own fate. In keeping with this trend there is now a growing drive to review the current laws on euthanasia and assisted suicide. The issues in the euthanasia debate usually revolve around patients who are terminally ill and/or suffering intractable pain. However, pain is not ...