Pain Management

The Eugene McDermott Center for Pain Management at UT Southwestern Medical Center provides the most advanced therapies to treat chronic pain. We offer both interventional pain procedures and non-interventional pain management.

Addressing Pain With Medical, Rehabilitative, and Behavioral Therapies

We understand that pain is influenced by biomedical, psychological, social, and environmental factors. Complementing our expert and compassionate care is a full range of state-of-the-art resources that enable us to deliver accurate diagnostic services and successful treatments. Treatment is aimed at alleviating pain, improving physical functioning, and relieving the psychological distress that results from pain.

UT Southwestern’s philosophy is to treat our patients with a combination of medical, rehabilitative, and behavioral therapies. Our patients often experience better results through this multimodal method than through using a single approach.

Types of Pain and Conditions

Acute, short-term pain is often a sign of injury or disease, while chronic pain is most frequently associated with conditions such as headaches, lower-back pain, or fibromyalgia, which is often characterized by pain in the back, hands, neck, shoulders, or pelvis and accompanied by fatigue or sleep disturbances.

We treat all types of pain, such as:

Back and shoulder pain
Extremity pain, both upper and lower
Facial pain
Foot and ankle pain
Hand and wrist pain
Headache
Hip and leg pain
Knee pain
Neck pain
Pelvic, penile, and vaginal pain
Spine pain

Some of the conditions our patients come to us for help with include:

Arthritis
Cancer
Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS or RSD)
Degenerative disc disease
Diabetic neuropathy
Herniated disc
Lumbar pain
Neuropathic pain
Peripheral neuropathy
Sciatica
Spinal stenosis

Treatments

UT Southwestern is one of the few pain management centers in Texas with on-site pain specialists, behavioral medicine specialists, and physical therapists. Our program uses therapies and treatment plans derived from the latest scientific advances.

Behavioral

Behavioral treatments include:

Behavioral-adaptive training
Biofeedback training
Coping skills training
Physician-directed cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
Physical therapy
Relaxation techniques
Stress management

Interventional

Procedural or interventional treatments, which often involve a minimally invasive injection, include:

Abdominal wall block
Botox for chronic migraine
Celiac, stellate, lumbar sympathetic block
Epidural steroid injection
Facet injection
Ganglion impar block
Intercostal nerve block
Intra-articular injection
Lateral femoral cutaneous nerve block
Nerve blocks (cluneal, pudendal, occipital)
Radiofrequency ablation
Sacroiliac joint block and ablation
Selective nerve root block
Spinal cord stimulator trial
Superior hypogastric block
Trigeminal ganglion injection
Trigger point injection

Pain Management Rehabilitation

For people who experience both short-term or chronic pain, UT Southwestern’s physicians can design compassionate and expert pain management rehabilitation programs.

Our pain specialists use the collective experience of a team of experts to determine the right course of action. In addition to physicians who specialize in anesthesiology, neurology, neuroradiology, and psychiatry, the rehabilitation team includes nurses, neuropsychologists, and, as appropriate, occupational, physical, and recreational therapists. After a comprehensive evaluation, they design an individual rehabilitation plan based on the patient’s unique condition and medical history.

Support Services

UT Southwestern has a caring staff of medical professionals who are committed to enhancing patients’ quality of life while also meeting the needs of patients’ families. We have a variety of informative and enriching support groups and other resources, which can be tailored to meet patients’ specific situations.

At UT Southwestern, excellence in patient care also includes pointing the way to other resources that have proved invaluable to others.

Online resources include: