Thanh:
Hi all, how are you today?
Michael:
Good, how’s it going?
Thanh:
Good. We have someone on Zoom today, our guest speaker.
Michael:
Yes, we have Dr. Dasgupta joining us from [inaudible 00:00:12].
Thanh:
Hi, Dr. Dasgupta, how are you today?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Hi, I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on the show.
Thanh:
Thanks for joining the show today. First of all, can you introduce for yourself to our viewers?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Sure. My name is Dr. Sunavo Dasgupta. I’m an anesthesiologist, but I’ve done some specialty training in a specialized field called interventional pain management. So what we do is treat a variety of chronic and acute pain conditions for our patients, trying to help them get back to a better quality of life.
Thanh:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), all right. [Vietnamese 00:00:51]. All right, then let’s go to our Q&A session today.
Michael:
Yep, that sounds good. So doctor, if you could tell us your role at Premier Pain and Spine, and what you do to treat patients there?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Sure. So I’m actually one of the founding partners of Premier Pain and Spine. We started the practice about 11 years ago in the Chicago area, so we went from basically one office in the back of a hospital, and then quickly expanded to five locations now, so it’s been real pleasure to see it grow and serve the community, and be able to treat so many patients. It’s really just been a blessing, to be honest. My role at the company is, I work clinically, so I have my own group of patients that I see and I treat, and I’m also responsible for just the day to day running and operation of the company as well, so handling everything from the nuts and bolts type and stuff, all the way to a strategic planning and vision of the company, but definitely my favorite part is still continuing to treat all our wonderful patients throughout the Chicago area.
Thanh:
All right, [Vietnamese 00:02:36].
Michael:
And before Taylor jumps on to her next question, can you tell us where the locations are and how many people are part of Premier Pain and Spine?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Sure, yeah. So we have office in Schaumburg, in Downers Grove, in Berwyn, downtown Chicago, and then we staff some offices in Elk Grove Village area as well. As part of our practice we have five physicians currently as part of our practice. We have physician’s assistants as well, and about 30 support staff between all offices to help everything run smoothly.
Thanh:
Right. [Vietnamese 00:03:49].
Taylor:
Doctor, what education and training did you go through to become a pain management physician?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Sure. Good question, it was quite a bit. So after college, you have to go to medical school, so that was a four year process to finally graduate from medical school with your MD. Then once you’re done with medical school, you enter into whatever subspecialty of medicine you chose. So that could be, if you wanted to do family medicine, or internal medicine, or surgery, you would enter into that residency training directly after medical school. So I chose anesthesia as my residency training, so I went out to Philadelphia for that, at the University of Pennsylvania, and that residency is four years long.
After that’s completed, you can choose to practice as a general anesthesiologist, but during my anesthesia residency, I got some exposure to interventional pain management during residency, and I loved it. I loved being able to treat patients coming in with acute pain, doing a procedure where your pain they’ve been suffering with for years, and doing a simple procedure to alleviate their symptoms, watching them walk out of that clinic happy, I thought it was amazing. So I knew then that that’s what I wanted to do. That required a additional one year, what we call a fellowship. So that’s an additional year of training even past your residency.
So that, all in I was about nine years into training, and then finally when you finish your fellowship, that’s when you are technically allowed to go out and practice your profession, obviously if you pass all your board exams, which I did. And my first job, if you will, right out of fellowship was actually starting Premier Pain and Spine, and that’s what I’ve been doing since then.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:06:23]. All right, so my followup question for you is, can you describe the PPS core strategy and mission?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Yeah. So our core strategy and mission of the company is we like to use a multidisciplinary approach to help treat and alleviate chronic pain for our patients, helping them to achieve a much better quality of life and, if possible, get them to as much of a pain-free life as possible. And by multidisciplinary, I mean we like to use not only procedures, but physical therapy, we like to use biofeedback, cognitive-behavioral therapy, whatever tools and means we have possible at our disposal, we’ll use every cutting-edge technology possible to try to improve patients’ quality of life.
And typically, we will write medication for patients, some patients need medications. But we’ve always tried to reduce or keep the amount of pain medication that patients are on as low as possible. We know for certain that high amounts of pain medication don’t help people achieve a quality of life that’s substantial in the long run. So we really try to utilize these other pillars of pain management in helping people achieve a higher quality of life, and alleviating the burden of chronic pain.
Thanh:
Right. Thank you. [Vietnamese 00:08:48].
Michael:
So doctor, I have a followup to Thanh’s question, and you mentioned something about multidisciplinary approach to treating patients. Can you expand on that? I know sometimes our clients, we handle personal injury cases, and our clients will oftentimes go to their primary care doctor, who will then refer them to an orthopedic physician, who then refers our clients to physical therapy. How does your practice fit into that puzzle, and can people, while they’re also seeing those treaters, come to your office as well for additional treatment?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Yeah, excellent question. Yeah, they can most definitely come see us at any point in that treatment algorithm. We actually tell our patients that the earlier that they come to see us, the better. And that has to do with pain, if treated early, before it sets up within the central nervous system, is much, much easier to treat. So if pain persists, what happens is that the nerves in the central nervous system can actually rewire on a somewhat permanent basis, and that can help to propagate this pain, keep this pain kind of constantly moving.
So even if you, for example, get a knee injury or a back injury and that gets fixed from an orthopedic perspective, well, you still, you see tons of patients, they still continue with pain. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that they didn’t receive adequate pain treatment early enough. And really, that’s where we kind of come in, and we say to people, “Do the physical therapy.” We love physical therapy, it’s great for people, we firmly believe in it. But a lot of times, there are treatments that we can render in addition to physical therapy that can really help to get people over that hump in many ways. For example, if somebody comes in with a herniated disk, physical therapy is an excellent treatment for a herniated disk, but you may need some type of procedure to also help to reduce that pain, reduce that inflammation and swelling, a simple procedure such as an epidural steroid injection can be extremely helpful in these patients. It can reduce the inflammation, it can reduce that constant pain signal emanating from that disk. And when you get rid of that pain signal, it stops this problem where the central nervous system can get too overexcited, if you will. And then, they don’t tend to develop or lead into chronic pain as frequently.
In addition to that, treating the pain also just makes the physical therapy more effective. They’re able to move more easily, they’re able to engage in physical therapy more easily. We find that the results from the therapy gets much easier. So that’s really how we can slot in and be helpful in terms of treatment, and you would want to see us, really, I would say at any point in the treatment algorithm, but sort of the earlier the better, like I said, to really get pain control early is key in helping to avoid the progression, chronic pain emergence.
And I think you’d asked about multidisciplinary. What that really means is that you use a multipronged approach to pain management, where you’re not just reliant on doing injections or medications, but you’re using those, you’re using those appropriately, on patients that need them. But then you’re also incorporating other aspects that we know work, for example, physical therapy, which is highly effective. There are biofeedback type of techniques that can also be helpful. Cognitive-behavioral therapy, things like that can be helpful. Using a multidisciplinary approach to pain management generally tends to be the most effective, and we like to employ all of those techniques under one roof at our clinic, I think that’s what really makes us special and sort of separates us from a lot of the other pain groups out there.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:14:26].
Michael:
So my next question is what area do you specialize in, and then what areas does your facility, Premier Pain and Spine, specialize in in general?
Dr. Dasgupta:
So we can treat pain from really any part of the body. I would say that the majority of people that we see, though, they have some type of spine issue. So issue with their neck or their low back are some of the primary reasons that we see people for. We also treat a lot of joint pain, so knee issues, hip issues, shoulder issues, elbow, all types of orthopedic issues. I would say those two are probably the main kind of categories of patients that we treat. And those I would say are patients that may be on the more acute side, that more recently got injured, an injury at work and they’ve herniated a disk, or they’ve fallen and they’ve hurt their knee.
We also treat a significant amount of patients that have developed chronic pain. So again, these are patients that maybe did not get aggressive pain management treatment early enough, they moved on to, unfortunately, the development of chronic pain, so they’re okay from the surgical standpoint, the surgeon looks at their surgery, the fusion is fine or the knee replacement looks good, but yet they continue to suffer debilitating pain symptoms, they can’t work, they can’t walk, things like that. We’ve treated quite a few patients like that. And we always tell people in that situation, “Look, this is not the end of the road, there are tons of treatment options for you.” We have a high success rate of helping people that come to our office with symptoms like that. Everything from simple things, such as physical therapy that they may not have tried in the past to advanced spinal cord stimulation techniques, which is a newer device where we implant wires outside the spinal cord, that helps to reduce or even eliminate that chronic pain that people feel from an old back injury or a knee injury or something of that nature. So I would say that’s sort of the main groups of people that we see coming into the office.
But no matter what, I mean, we really treat every type of pain condition under the sun. I mean, everything from headache, so migraine headache, all the way down to foot injuries, achilles injuries, things like that. So from the whole top of the head to the bottom of the feet, any type of chronic pain or acute pain people have, we can handle it.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:17:58].
Taylor:
Doctor, you’ve mentioned spinal cord simulator injections, procedures. These sound expensive. What insurance do you take, and what do you do if a patient does not have insurance?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Yeah, so the good thing is, all these procedures are covered by insurance. So Medicare, Blue Cross, Aetna, all these procedures are covered. So in general, it’s the same as any type of doctor’s visit. So that makes it very easy, these procedures are very accessible for people to receive, and insurance pays for them just like they pay for anything else. If people don’t have insurance, I mean, we work with them. I mean, we’re never going to leave people hanging out to dry, somebody comes in with chronic pain and significant pain issues, we work with patients all the time that don’t have insurance, or are underinsured, and at the end of the day, our goal is we just want to help people. We understand that sometimes even a simple procedure can be expensive, it can really put a significant burden on somebody. But they get that one procedure, it allows them to go back to work, and re-engage with their life, and that’s important to us, and we’ll do whatever we can in our power to work with people to make sure that they can get the type of treatment that they need.
Taylor:
A lot of our personal injury clients are hesitant at first to get treatment they need because of the cost, but [inaudible 00:20:49] I feel like you said, “We urge them, get the treatment that you need, complete the treatment as instructed by your doctor,” and then some physicians will [inaudible 00:21:00] files, our firm will handle the bills. But especially if you have insurance, people should not hesitate to get treatment that they need.
Dr. Dasgupta:
Yes, that’s correct. Correct.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:21:10]. So I have a question for you. What is pain management, and why is it so important?
Dr. Dasgupta:
The field of pain management is the treatment of acute and chronic pain. And when I first started, I don’t think that we really understood a lot about pain management, and felt that it was, unless you had an injury that was immediately visible, why would people have chronic pain? And our understanding of the field over even the last decade has come so far. We know that chronic pain, especially chronic low back pain is the leading cause for disability in our country. It costs our country billions of dollars per year, leads to so much time off from work, and time lost from family. It’s a debilitating condition, and it’s sad, because maybe pain won’t necessarily lead to death, but it really causes such an impact on people’s lives that it can really make every aspect of life so difficult. So I think that the awareness of our chronic pain has come a long way, I think people are much more open to going out and getting treatment about it now, and to us, those are all excellent things. And the more people are aware and the more they come out and get treatment, then that’s what really allows us to finally get out and use our toolbox to help these people.
So chronic pain, kind of getting back to your question, is defined as pain that generally tends to last for more than three months. Again, we don’t want people to get to that point, which is why we sort of advocate for earlier treatment of pain. If pain has been around for three months, we would say definitely, go see somebody who specializes in pain management, because at that point something needs to be done. It’s unlikely that it’s just going to start to go away on its own.
Prior to that, if your patients are noticing that this pain is lingering, it’s not improving the way that it should, we would encourage them to see a pain management physician, because that’s indicating to them that there’s something going on that the body can’t handle on its own. And sometimes a body just needs a little bit of help to get over that hump and fix whatever is going on.
And people really know their bodies the best. If a patient has an injury, and typically they may have a history of throwing their back out, it gets better usually within a week, but this one’s lingering, it’s lasting for three to four weeks off some injury, they know that this is different from their normal situation, and that I need to do something a little bit more aggressive about it. So we would encourage those patients to definitely come in and seek care from a pain management physician at that point to, again, ensure that the pain doesn’t develop into a chronic pain type of [inaudible 00:25:28].
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:25:29].
Michael:
So doctor, you’ve described some of the services offered at Premier Pain and Spine in general, I was wondering if you could discuss a handful of them in more detail, and how these services go about treating your patients?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Sure. So for example, one of the most common things that we see at our clinic is back pain, so low back pain. It helps to sort of look at, why are they developing that back pain to begin with? So when you come see us at our clinic, we’re going to go over all your old medical records, including notes from other doctors, if those are present. We’ll look at your old MRI results. If they’re too old, we may opt to order another MRI to get some up-to-date pictures as to what’s happening. So based on all that, we’ll take all that information and come up with a accurate diagnosis as to what is actually causing that pain for you.
Typically, we see for low back pain patients that the primary causes of back pain in them would be a herniated disk, if they, that’s one of the primary causes. Another primary cause is arthritis in the low back, in the facet joints, and the third primary cause is something called sacroiliac joint disease, or sacroiliitis. All three of those areas of the body require separate treatment, so it’s extremely important in the beginning to nail down an appropriate and accurate diagnosis, and I think that’s really one thing that separates us from a lot of other clinics out there is that we put a lot of time and effort into that initial portion of the visit. Because we don’t want to sit there and do multiple procedures on people that aren’t going to work, trying to pin down the cause of their problem. We want to get it right from the first time, so we spend a significant amount of time making sure that we have the correct diagnosis upfront.
If, for example, we go through everything and we see that, okay, it looks like a herniated disk is most likely what’s causing your pain, we would do a simple procedure called an epidural steroid injection, which involves taking a very small needle and using an X-ray machine, and under X-ray guidance, we advance that needle to around where that disk is bulging, and we inject a little bit of steroid medication around that disk, and that helps to reduce significantly the inflammation and swelling associated with that disk. Oftentimes, that disk is pressing on a nerve, hence why patients may feel pain shooting down their leg. So that treatment can also alleviate any type of shooting pain or sciatica thank type of pain that they may be feeling from that herniated disk.
If we do our homework and find that, well, it’s actually the back arthritis in the facet joint that’s causing the pain, there’s really no evidence of a herniated disk, then we may offer a completely different type of procedure called a facet joint injection, which is, again, we take a small needle, but instead of advancing it near the disk, we advance it under X-ray guidance into a very small joint, just running along the side of the spine. And these joints allow our spines to move, to rotate, bend forward and backwards. And they can develop arthritis within them just like any other joints in our body. So our goal in that procedure is we inject a very tiny amount of steroid and local anesthetic into that arthritic joint next to the spine.
If we do, again, go through the images and we see that, okay, it’s actually the sacroiliac joint that’s causing the pain, well then it’s, again, a completely different type of procedure, and again, we would use an X-ray machine to guide a very, very small needle into that joint space, injecting some steroid into there. So those are just three quick examples of some very common procedures that we do at our clinic, and those I would consider very simple. And we do more complex procedures, for example, if somebody fractures part of their spine, there’s a procedure called a kyphoplasty, where we can actually take some cement and inject it into the spine, helping to stabilize that fracture, and that’s a much more involved procedure.
So there is a whole myriad of procedures that we can do. I think the important thing is to make sure that the diagnosis, though, from the start, is correct. Because that way you’re getting the right procedure, for the right condition, and that’s really what’s going to be the key here, is making sure that you get treated with the correct procedure, so that then you feel better much quicker, and also you’re not having to go through multiple procedures that may not be effective.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:31:16].
Taylor:
Do you help people who have been injured on the job or in a personal injury accident?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Yes, so that’s a pretty decent-sized chunk of our patient population. We treat a lot of workman’s comp and personal injury patients. We understand that a lot of times that their injuries tend to be a little bit more acute, maybe somebody was injured a few days before coming in to see us, and a lot of workup, imaging, testing, things like that, may not have been completed at the time, they’re sort of wondering what’s going on. And a lot of times they’re kind of scared of the system or what’s going to happen, and what’s this mean for my job and my treatment? And things like that.
And we take our time. We want people to know in that situation, assure them that we’re going to do everything we can to help them get them back to work, or get back to quality of life that they had before. And we take our initial meeting with them, and then we’ll move forward from there and make sure that we cover all bases, cross all our Ts and dot all our Is, order all the appropriate testing, make sure that we figure out exactly what’s going on and get him started down the right treatment algorithm from the beginning.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:34:35]. So how many pain management visits does insurance usually cover?
Dr. Dasgupta:
There’s really not too much of a limit. If you’re talking about, so just a standard office visit, it’s like any other type of office visit, and there’s no limit on that. For the procedures, depending on what type of procedure it is that you’re requiring, those may be limited to six to eight per calendar year. But we usually find that the limits are generally pretty generous. We don’t really run into problems with that. Usually we can treat and get people feeling better under the limit that most insurance companies set for the number of visits. But again, just to see us to discuss options, or maybe adjust medications, or see how the physical therapy is going and things like that, there’s no limit to the number of visits you can have.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:35:59].
Michael:
Doctor, could you tell us what a soft tissue injury is, and do you oftentimes see soft tissue injuries as a result of car accidents?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Yeah, so that is very, very common in car accidents, to see soft tissue injury. In general, soft tissue injury is considered injury that’s not part of the bony skeleton. So it could involve tendons, ligaments, or even the muscles themselves. So I’d say, a good example of that is somebody who’s just been in a car accident, and let’s say they get hit by somebody from the rear, and it causes a whiplash [inaudible 00:36:56], so their head moves forward and back very quickly.
We see a lot of people develop neck pain from that, very, very significant neck pain. And you’ll get maybe some detailed imaging of the neck, so that there’s an MRI, and everything looks good as far as the disks and the bones are concerned. Nothing’s broken, they don’t have a slipped disk, there’s no pressure on the nerves or anything like that.
But you’ll see on the MRI that there’s a lot of spasm, or constant tightening of the neck muscles. And that clues us in that there’s a soft tissue injury, because that tends to be what happens when muscles get injured, they tend to tighten and they tend to spasm. So we see these types of soft tissue injuries a lot in patients who have a whiplash injury like this. And treatments for it are very effective, and what we would do is get somebody started in physical therapy, and maybe put them on some type of muscle relaxer to start to reduce some of that spasm. But one of the most effective treatments that we do are, we’ll call it trigger point injections under ultrasound guidance, where we actually use a machine, an ultrasound machine, and we’re able to physically look, visualize where that muscle is injured, where it’s spasming. When we see that area on our monitor, we inject a very small amount of steroid and local anesthetic, and it helps for reducing inflammation, the swelling, and the spasm associated with that soft tissue injury.
So yes, very common, oftentimes it is misdiagnosed as a non-soft tissue injury, and we see that, a lot of patients needlessly suffering from soft tissue injury for a prolonged period of time, because it wasn’t treated appropriately enough from the start. But once they do receive appropriate treatment, it tends to respond very well.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:38:56].
Taylor:
You’ve already touched on this a bit, but how does pain management treatment help soft tissue injuries?
Dr. Dasgupta:
We employ, I would say, again, we employ a real multidisciplinary approach to soft tissue injury, and unfortunately untreated soft tissue injury can lead to chronic pain just like anything else can, so if it’s sort of left untreated or undiagnosed for a longer period of time, over three months, we see it becoming a real chronic issue for people that then becomes quite difficult to treat.
So our approach to soft tissue injury is to sort of be a little bit more aggressive with it upfront. So if we see somebody with clear soft tissue injury, they have not done physical therapy, or let’s say they’ve done inappropriate physical therapy, for example, physical therapy that was not geared towards the soft tissue portion of it, maybe they’ve been misdiagnosed as having the problem with their spine, and their therapy was geared more towards the spine. Well, that’s not necessarily going to help the soft tissue portion of the injury. So we would get that person back into therapy that’s more appropriate, and targeted towards that soft tissue injury.
There are certain types of medications that can be very helpful for soft tissue injury, a lot of these are non-opiate, they’re not addictive, they’re not habit-forming. So we always like to avoid those types of medications in people if at all possible. A lot of these are topical formulations that are easy to apply, that work just in the area that you put them. So we tend to lean on medications like that.
And then from a procedural standpoint, we would rely on treatments such as these trigger point injections, where we would, again, use the ultrasound machine to guide the needle exactly into that area where the soft tissue injury is located, and put a small amount of treatment medication down in that area.
So I would say that’s the general approach to treating soft tissue injury at our clinic. And again, it all comes down to diagnosis, making sure that it’s diagnosed appropriately from the start is really the key here, so that people are getting the appropriate treatment from the very beginning, that’s when people tend to have the best outcomes.
Taylor:
And if a patient is undergoing physical therapy treatment, they’re still experiencing continuous pain, at what point do they contact you or a pain management doctor? When do they make that decision?
Dr. Dasgupta:
We actually encourage people to see us, again, as early as possible. But if they’re having pain during physical therapy, they shouldn’t hesitate. They don’t need to complete the treatment of therapy first and then call us if they’re having pain during therapy they should call, we should treat, that’ll help to reduce their pain. It’s going to make the therapy so much more effective, too, if we’re able to do that. So we work pretty closely with different groups of physical therapists where we’ll actually provide treatment, let’s say, for example, a trigger point injection, and then they’ll go to physical therapy right after we do our procedure. And then the therapist is able to get much better range of motion, the patient’s able to do a lot more during therapy, push themselves, because a lot of therapy is sort of getting past a wall that you may have, and sort of breaking past that in small increments. You go 5% more on Monday, then 5% more on Wednesday, then 5% more on Friday. And then if we are able to sort of alleviate the pain before you go into therapy, it makes it much easier for patients to do that.
I think that’s a very positive effect on patients, too, it acts as positive reinforcement that they’re really doing well and making good progress in their physical therapy. So most people that we see in our clinics that are coming to see us for a pain management standpoint, they tend to see us before they’ve even done physical therapy. So the majority of the patients that see us haven’t done any physical therapy at that point. We tend to be, I’d almost consider us gatekeepers, where you would get some type of injury, whether that’s chronic or acute, and really we should be the first people that you see. You come in, you see us, we order the appropriate testing, get the appropriate referrals made. I mean, if it requires an orthopedic referral or a neurosurgical referral, we’ll do that right away. If it doesn’t require that, then we can stick to physical therapy, maybe some of the procedures that we do to help treat people. But again, the earlier people come in to see us, the better.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:44:55]. So does PPS also treat patients based [inaudible 00:46:03]?
Dr. Dasgupta:
On lien?
Thanh:
Lean, yes, I’m sorry,
Dr. Dasgupta:
Oh, no problem. Yes, we do. We treat patients based on lien.
Thanh:
All right. [Vietnamese 00:46:21].
Michael:
Yeah, and Thanh, I think what’s important for the viewers to know about doctors who are willing to treat patients on a lien, for example, if you’re involved in a car accident, and you need medical treatment, and you’re concerned about the medical bills and who’s going to pay for them, what doctors will do is provide the treatment, and then rather than send the client or the patient a bill, they would send our office a bill, and then when it comes time to settle the case with the at fault driver, the insurance company, we would use those settlement funds to pay any type of doctor bills, which is essentially what a lien is. So it’s important for the viewers to know that, whether you have insurance or not, or whether you’re concerned about medical bills, it’s good to know that the folks at premier pain and spine will work with various insurance companies, and they’ll also lien any type of file, which means the clients don’t pay, and it would just come out of the settlement funds, because people are always concerned after car accidents or any type of personal injury, who’s going to pay all these bills? And so it’s good to know that Premier Pain and Spine will do that, send us the bill, and we’ll take care of it at the end from the settlement proceeds.
Thanh:
Okay. [Vietnamese 00:47:36].
Michael:
So Doctor, we have a couple more questions for you, and this one is some advice that you can give. So initially I was going to ask you what’s the best advice you give your patients, but I also think it’s important, if you could also give some advice to maybe people who are viewing or watching this show who aren’t yet your patients or haven’t seen a pain management doctor, what type of advice do you give people who are experiencing chronic pain at home, who haven’t seen a pain management doctor, and then, what’s your best advice when patients do make it to you, when they walk in the door, what do you tell them?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Yeah, I mean, my best advice I could say is don’t hesitate to seek treatment. We see a lot of people that they’ve gone on with their pain for so long that it just becomes a normal part of their life. And I don’t think they realize until after they receive treatment, what a huge impact that pain had been having on their quality of life. I mean, people are resilient. If they have a chronic hip issue or a knee issue or a back issue, they find ways to work around it. I mean, they’ll modulate the way they get out of the car, or they won’t engage in a certain activity that they used to like, because they know that’s going to aggravate their pain. They won’t pick up their kids, they won’t go for runs anymore even though they used to love doing those types of things. So they learn to live with it, but I don’t think they realize, really, how much they’ve had to compromise until they finally come in and receive treatment. They say, “Wow, I just didn’t realize how much this had been impacting my life, how I’d just kind of adjusted my life to live with this pain.”
And we tell people that you shouldn’t have to do that, that you don’t have to change the whole way you live just to deal with this pain. Let’s deal with the pain and get you back to the life that you want to live. And that’s really what I would tell our viewers, small example, but we treat a lot of migraine headache as well, and one of the treatments that we render for that is Botox. And I had a patient the other day who, she didn’t really feel that the migraines were that big of an impact, we did the Botox treatment, and she’s been completely headache-free for three months now, no migraines. And she told me the other day in clinic that she hasn’t felt this way in 20 years. She didn’t realize what a huge impact it had on her life, that with the migraines, she was snapping at her kids, and short-tempered, and was going to sleep early all the time, and now she has a completely different perspective on life. And she was really grateful for that, and it was really satisfying to hear, from my perspective, that we could make such a change in a person’s life.
So I would say that that would be my main advice, is don’t hesitate. Even if you’ve been told in the past that there’s no effective treatment, there’s always something that a new set of eyes can see differently, and some treatment that can be rendered that can be helpful for people. So that’s really, I’d say, the advice that I’d give to most people listening that are kind of on the fence or wondering if they should receive treatment or not.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:52:32].
Taylor:
If someone is struggling with pain management, what is the best way to schedule an initial evaluation or appointment at Premier Pain and Spine?
Dr. Dasgupta:
Sure, so there’s multiple channels people can use to schedule appointments with us. There’s right on our website, patients can do a quick form fill, takes about 10 seconds, with some of their contact information, and that gets sent to our staff immediately for somebody to call them back to get them scheduled. They can always call. Our phone number is, again, on our website, 847 519-4701 is the main number, and they can get passed through to our scheduling line, we always have somebody on that line during normal business hours. So those are probably the two best ways to get in touch with our clinic, would be through a form fill or calling our main number.
There’s email address as well on our website, so if patients aren’t comfortable with those first two options, email, we always check it, they’re always returned. So if people want to schedule just by sending a simple email, that’s fine as well.
Thanh:
[Vietnamese 00:53:54]. Thanks Michael, Taylor, and thanks doctor for joining the show today. Really appreciate your participation.
Michael:
Thanks for having us on. Yeah, thanks doctor, we appreciate it.
