Pain affects about 26% of Americans or more than 76 million people. More than 10% experience chronic pain for at least 1 year and 50% to 75% of cancer patients experience moderate to severe pain. Interventional pain management is a new and growing multidisciplinary field that relies heavily on diagnostic imaging to characterize pain and guide treatment. This article relates the history of pain management medicine and introduces the functional anatomy of pain, use of diagnostic imaging in assessing pain and image-guided interventional pain management. The oft-neglected but important role of patient psychology in effective pain management and strategies for effective interactions between imaging personnel and patients also are discussed.
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