What Special Considerations Should Be Made When Treating Pain During Pregnancy?

— -- Question: What Special Considerations Should Be Made When Treating Pain During Pregnancy?

Answer: Pregnant women really are a unique population to the pain world. No one expects a woman to have pain in this time, when generally women are pretty happy.

With that being said, there are many things that we can do to take care of women, pregnant women, who actually have pain. But we have to take into consideration a couple of things, one, the pregnant women, two, the baby. So anything that we give orally or through IV actually may impact the baby, so we start off by finding ways in which to take care of women in a non-invasive manner. So that may be physical therapy, it may be psychological counseling, a number of different things to find out, to see if whether or not a woman might benefit.

The other thing that I want to point out is that we have more and more young people who are surviving their cancers, surviving their diabetes and ending up with chronic pain problems. And so more and more of these patients may be on medications and people need to work closely with their obstetrician-gynecologist as to whether or not these medications continue to be appropriate for the woman who is getting ready to give birth.

So there are many things that we need to do. It really does point towards a taking of these women in a team fashion, meaning, a multidisciplinary fashion, pain specialists in conjunction with the psychologist maybe as well as their obstetrician-gynecologist.

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