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:

• American Cancer Society: Cancer Pain
• American Psychological Association
• Arthritis Foundation: North Texas Region
• National Cancer Institute: Pain Control: Support for People With Cancer
• National Headache Foundation
• National Osteoporosis Foundation