What You Need To Know About Pain Pumps

03 Dec What You Need To Know About Pain Pumps

Living with pain, be it short-term or long, can be difficult and challenging for most people. But, the truth is there are many types of medical conditions that result in episodes of pain. Controlling the level of pain is essential to living a normal life, and working with a pain management clinic is one of the best ways to learn about the most effective ways to control pain. One device that is used for this purpose is known, generically, as the pain pump.

What is a Pain Pump?

Medical experts agree that medications given for pain work better if they are taken right when the pain begins, as opposed to taking the medications once the pain becomes severe. By using a patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) pump (better known as a pain pump), you can deliver the medication to yourself via an intravenous (IV) device when you need the medication. The pain pump gives you far more control than having to wait for someone else to give you your meds.

The benefit to the pain pump is that it holds the pain medicine you have been prescribed. In some cases, this can be morphine, but these days many other painkilling medications can be used in the pump. The pain pump is attached to your body with a tube that leads into a vein. When pain comes upon you, you decide if you need a dose of medicine or not. If you do, you simply press a button and the pain pump delivers the exact dosage that was pre-set by your doctor. As a safety precaution, the pump will not deliver more than the prescribed amount of medicine over a certain amount of time.

As you might imagine, PCA pumps are found most often in hospital settings, especially after surgery. However, a pain management clinic may also use the pumps for certain patients. Pain pumps can be very helpful for those who are recovering from various types of injuries and can be used at home.

In some cases, the pain pump may be set by the doctor to deliver a small, but constant, amount of pain medicine. These types of pain pumps often allow the patient to boost the amount by a tiny amount if the pain is especially bad at times. However, the vast majority of pumps are pre-set to only deliver a certain amount of medicine, and no more, when the patient presses the dispense button.

If you speak with medical professionals at a pain management clinic they will tell you that these PCA pumps have other benefits as well. It has been reported that those who use them often feel less stressed, less anxious and less depressed than they felt before using them. Users are less sleepy and tired simply because they are using less of their pain medicine. Most of all, they report that they feel more in control of their healing and recovery.

To learn more about pain pumps, contact the Pain Management Seattle clinic today. They can answer any questions you may have, and they offer the best in Seattle pain management clinic services.