Once you and your health-care provider have finished assessing your pain — from its location and intensity, to what remedies you've tried, to its effect on your life — then a new or modified treatment plan can begin.
Fortunately, there are many ways to treat chronic pain. Some approaches don't require either drugs or surgery, although there are several drug and surgical options available.
For many pain treatments, there's only limited scientific evidence that they work. Sometimes a treatment that seems to be effective in one study doesn't work well in another. So health-care providers who treat chronic pain may suggest a series of different treatments or a combination of treatments to find what works for you. For example, people with chronic pain caused by cancer often need a combination of drugs, surgery and radiation to treat their cancer and control their pain.
