Pain Management

When pain lasts for more than 12 weeks, it’s considered chronic. Chronic pain has the power to affect everything in your life – from your daily routine to your relationships. Many people become so used to their chronic pain they forget what it’s like to live normally.

The chronic pain management experts at The University of Kansas Health System are here to help. Our double board-certified, fellowship-trained pain medicine anesthesiologists have the highest level of training and education available. Their expertise ensures you receive safe, high-quality care when you need it most.

Chronic pain can be very mysterious – it may seem to have no direct cause or obvious triggers. It may affect 1 area of the body or be in several places at once. It can make your muscles tense, steal your energy and limit your ability to move freely.

To create an effective pain management plan, it’s important to understand what’s causing your pain. Our pain management team will conduct a complete pain assessment to identify the cause of your pain and pinpoint the most beneficial therapies. This in-depth screening will include a detailed review of your medical history so that we can see what has and has not worked for you in the past. That way, only those treatments that are most successful or that haven’t been tried yet are recommended.

We believe in providing compassionate care for each person and an individualized approach to treatment. Our goal is to treat your pain with the full spectrum of options available to you, including a combination of minimally invasive interventions, physical therapy and, when necessary, medications.

We believe not only in treating pain, but also in identifying the exact source of pain to better tailor a treatment plan for you. Experienced care is provided quickly, and most people improve within just a few visits. We frequently help people from Kansas City, Overland Park and the surrounding areas achieve lasting pain relief using an opioid-free approach.

There are many different therapies for chronic pain relief. Choosing the right treatment for you will require a comprehensive evaluation. For some people, a combination of approaches might be recommended for longer-lasting pain relief.

At The University of Kansas Health System, we offer all of today’s most current treatments for chronic pain relief. Some of your options include:

• Advanced cancer pain treatments
• Intrathecal pump implants
• Spinal tumor radiofrequency ablation
• Advanced spinal stenosis treatments
• mild® procedure for lumbar spinal stenosis
• Vertiflex™
• BOTOX® for headaches
• Dorsal root ganglion stimulation
• Facet joint injections
• Interlaminar and transforaminal epidurals
• Intrathecal drug delivery for chronic pain
• Intra-articular injections for shoulders, hips and knees
• Minimally invasive interspinous, interlaminar stabilization device (Minuteman®)
• Nerve blocks (abdominal, occipital, joints and more)
• Neurolytic injections
• Peripheral nerve stimulation
• Multifidus muscle stimulation (ReActiv8®)
• Permanent systems (Nalu systems)
• Temporary systems (SPRINT® systems)
• Radiofrequency ablation (spine, knee and other joints)
• Sacroiliac joint injection
• Sacroiliac joint percutaneous fusion
• Spinal cord stimulation
• BurstDR™ (Abbott)
• DTM™
• Evoke® closed-loop system
• High-frequency stimulation (HF10™; Nevro)
• Small implantable pulse generator systems
• WaveWriter Alpha™
• Spinal tumor radiofrequency ablation
• Tendinopathy management (Tenex Health TX™ System)
• Trigger point injections
• Vertebral augmentation (kyphoplasty/vertebroplasty)
• Vertebral basal nerve ablation (Intracept®)