Persistent Post Surgical Pain

About Persistent Post Surgical Pain

Surgeons are enormously skillful, highly trained specialists. Some surgeries though are associated with persistent pain syndromes as nerves are injured by the process of surgery and some damaged nerves behave abnormally. In most cases, post surgical pain doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong.

Examples of surgery that can cause nerve pain range from the “everyday” surgeries such as hernia surgery or knee replacement to the less common such as mastectomy or post spinal surgery.

For example nearly 5% of patients after hernia surgery develop severe nerve related pain, even after such a “minor” surgery.

Treating these problems early to prevent them becoming long term is essential.

For example, nerve pain after surgery can be assisted by nerve block to diagnose the nerve problem and then radiofrequency techniques to calm the nerves down and stop them sending so many pain signals.