Ache knowledgeable Dr. Woo Jin Lee is certainly one of College Orthopedics’ newest additions to its workers. Lee, a graduate of Bishop Hendricken Excessive Faculty in Warwick, grew up in Rhode Island and returned to the Ocean State after finishing a fellowship in ache drugs at Massachusetts Normal Hospital in Boston, and an anesthesiology residency at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia College Irving Medical Heart.
Lee sees sufferers at College Orthopedics’ Westerly location and performs surgical procedure and procedures on the observe’s places throughout the state. He discusses his strategy to ache remedy and the impression ache aid can have on a affected person.
PBN: What are a few of the strategies you employ to deal with sufferers affected by ache?
LEE: There are numerous remedy strategies, together with injections, medicines and rehabilitative therapies, that I make the most of to deal with ache. I typically use a mix of those strategies to formulate a remedy plan for every affected person primarily based on particular person targets. The vital side of treating ache is to tackle a focused strategy: determine the supply of the first ache and goal it with medicines and injections. I then make the most of rehabilitative therapies to stop ache from recurring.
PBN: Do you additionally use surgical procedure as an choice to handle ache?
LEE: Sure. If the affected person continues to undergo from ache regardless of my remedy plan, then I seek the advice of with an acceptable surgeon to find out if the affected person is a surgical candidate. For backbone ache, I could contemplate performing a spinal wire stimulator implant or vertebroplasty/kyphoplasty primarily based on the reason for the affected person’s ache.
PBN: Do any of the remedy strategies you employ lead to restoration from persistent ache?
LEE: There isn’t any single remedy possibility that ensures full restoration from persistent ache. Nevertheless, my remedy plan is designed to focus on ache in a multimodal vogue. By addressing completely different points of ache, my aim is to supply regular enchancment for sufferers with persistent ache and maximize their odds of full restoration.
PBN: How a lot of an impression can correct ache remedy have on sufferers’ every day lives?
LEE: The constructive impression of correct ache remedy will be great on a affected person’s every day life. As persistent ache sufferers all know, dwelling with ache each day can have a devastating impression on temper, sleep and performance. To place it in perspective, persistent ache could make your favourite exercise right into a depressing one. The core aspect of ache administration is to give attention to bettering the affected person’s high quality of life somewhat than simply decreasing ache scores alone. My job is to give you a remedy plan that may positively impression sufferers’ lives in order that they will reside their greatest lives with out ache.
PBN: What made you resolve to hitch College Orthopedics after you accomplished a fellowship in ache drugs at Massachusetts Normal Hospital?
LEE: After my coaching at MGH, my aim was to proceed my profession at an establishment that holds high quality of affected person care and evidence-based drugs to the very best normal. I’ve discovered that just like MGH, College Orthopedics is really devoted to offering the very best high quality of orthopedic and ache care to the sufferers. As a part of Brown College, we try to be a world chief in medical analysis with utility to affected person care. To work for such an establishment proper right here at house is the very best job I might have hoped for!
Elizabeth Graham is a PBN contributing author.
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