"Complex Pain Syndromes In The Emergency Room" - Randy Dotinga
Chris Hahn, MD, assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, doesn’t have any trouble conjuring a simple definition of fibromyalgia. He told colleagues this week that strategies can help doctors get through the frustration of treating fibromyalgia and related conditions. "Amplified pain syndromes are all essentially the same thing," he said in a presentation at the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians. "It's very important to believe your patients and sit down and talk to them. You don't need to use medications. But if you do use them, opiates are probably never going to be the right answer in these circumstances." Amplified pain syndromes like fibromyalgia and complex regional pain syndrome (CRPD) can present with a variety of vague symptoms like total body pain, generalized fatigue, dizziness, and "just feeling off," said Dr. Hahn. "These are all the things we don't like to see when we pick up charts." According to Dr. Hahn, it’s crucial to understand that these conditions are real. "You might not believe fibromyalgia is a thing," he said, but studies have proven that people with these conditions "all have central augmentation of pain processing. Something is happening with the wiring of the patient's brain."
- Christopher Hahn, MD, Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai