A University Don Has Warned Over Pain Management

Comfort Umoren

A University don, Professor Babatunde Solageru of the department of medicine Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), has said that the management of pain would be less cumbersome if the treatment involves both multidisciplinary and multimodal processes.

Solagberu who made the statement at the launch of Flexilor, a new pain killer drug by Glenmark Pharmaceutical Limited in Lagos recently noted that, pain is the number one reason why patients visit the health care institution or doctor’s office.

He warned that, it is very important to diagnose the cause of the pain before administering treatment, saying pain could be due to different reasons and very important to know the cause, as some pain drugs (analgesics) have been found to cause more complications than the pain they are meant to cure.

According to him, some analgesics have been found to cause kidney problem, while some can lead gastrointestinal disorder and warned that, it is not advisable to take pain killer drugs without first knowing the cause and the appropriate medication to apply for treatment.

Solagberu who is the Head, Department of Surgery Lagos State University College of Medicine and Consultant Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgeon at LASUTH, in a lecture with the theme: ‘Current Trends in the Management of Pain,’ noted that back pain is the commonest type of pain people experience, which is followed by joints pain.

The don who defined pain according to International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as: ‘’an-unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage,’’ noted that pain is always subjective, as it is every physician’s responsibility to manage.