Male: What is the most chronic type of pain that you usually see?
Dr.: I guess in the United States the number one is lower back pain.
Male: And can you usually find the reason for that or sometimes you cannot?
Dr.: You know, retrospectively, in dealing with the pain in our clinics. I would say seven out of ten, we could make up pretty accurate diagnosis but I would say about 30% of the patients we can never, exactly why they are having that pain and we just have to treat the symptoms.
Male: The first time you see a patient with low back type of situation, what would be the approach to the problem in making the right diagnosis?
Dr.: The most important is good history before patients even come to the clinic we send them a 67-page sheet to kind us an idea of what is going on before they even get to the practice. And of course they meet with one of our pain management physicians here where we go over their full history. Every type of treatment they have taken. Usually on a first-time visit, we also will get them involved with our psychologist. There is a good chance that they will get involved with some type of physical therapy. Sometimes from that first visit, we don’t make a diagnosis and sometimes it takes us through the second and third visit to make a decision what type of treatment plan they are going to have.
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