Jacob R. Caylor, MD, DABA, DABPM Pain medicine has changed quite a bit over the last 20 years. We’re in a much more advanced space now, with new therapies becoming available every day. However, these new options create challenges for both the patient and the provider. Which therapy will best serve each unique case? As these therapies become more and more complex, how do doctors teach patients about the reasons why some choices are better than others? There are also patients who have received treatment but are unclear why certain decisions were made.  This blog is designed to educate our p ..read more

Pain management doctors – physicians who specialize in the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of pain – have advanced training that qualifies them as your best source of treatment if you are experiencing any type of pain due to illness or injury. After a general residency, these physicians undergo an additional one-year fellowship in pain management, and they are board-certified in a specialty, such as sport injuries or cancer pain. However, most pain management doctors devote their time and expertise to helping chronic pain patients whose needs can sometimes be hard to diagnose an ..read more

To describe what we do as “pain management” would be true, but it wouldn’t tell the full story. Yes, we provide pain management, but it goes much further than that. According to Dr. Pankaj Mehta, our Chief Medical Officer, “The priority of interventional pain management (IPM) is finding the root cause and interrupting the pain cycle. IPM is an ideal treatment for both acute and chronic pain and can be used to alleviate even the most complex source of pain.” We provide a variety of interventional treatment modalities to help manage your pain by creating a personalized plan —no matter what the c ..read more

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates as many as 100 million U.S. adults suffer from chronic pain. More alarming was that 8 percent of U.S. adults (19.6 million) reported having high-impact chronic pain directly proportional to suffering. Clinicians at Pain Specialists of Austin and Central Texas Pain Center have helped thousands of patients by identifying and treating the source of their chronic pain. Chronic pain, as explained by Dr. Pankaj Mehta (MD, DABA, DABPM), a nationally renowned interventional pain doctor and Medical Director at Pain Specialists of Austin and ..read more

Dr. Pankaj Mehta (MD, DABA, DABPM), a nationally renowned interventional pain doctor, is the Chief Medical Officer at Pain Specialists of Austin and Central Texas Pain Center. Dr. Mehta is a Board-Certified Anesthesiologist, trained at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, before completing an interventional pain fellowship at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic. During his training, Dr. Mehta was awarded a Harvard fellowship for NIH-sponsored research exploring the need for such drugs as ketamine in chronic opioid therapy. Dr. Mehta, who has gained national recogniti ..read more

March 25-31 will mark the sixth annual National Physicians Week, seven days of acknowledgment ending in Doctor’s Day, a celebration of physicians’ dedication, hard work, impact on lives, and sacrifices for the public good. The weeklong holiday not only recognizes the work of medical professionals in the present, but also commemorates the longstanding history of physicians, a story  27,000 years in the making. Historians tell us that the first known healers showed up in cave paintings in what is now France, with ancient drawings depicting individuals using plants for medicinal purposes and ..read more

Thanks to daylight saving time (Mar. 14), you will likely miss out on some sleep this week; however, there’s never been a better time to start new habits – your body will thank you At precisely 2 a.m. on Sunday, Mar. 14, a majority of Americans will transport forward in time, losing an hour of their beloved weekends and likely, 60 minutes of sleep. This isn’t science fiction, rather a century-old societal tradition we have come to know as daylight saving time, which occurs twice per year, seasonally each Fall and Spring. While there’s much debate over whether daylight saving time still has a p ..read more

A creeping pain beginning in your lumbar or buttock area and running down the backs of your legs could mean problems with your sciatic nerve With an estimated 40 percent of individuals experiencing lumbar radiculopathy at some point in their lives, it’s likely that you or someone you know has experienced or is experiencing this debilitating issue. Although familiar, many people still don’t fully understand what causes lumbar radiculopathy, how to identify it and the best ways to reduce its impact on our daily lives.  What is lumbar radiculopathy or sciatica and how do I know if I have it ..read more

If you’re experiencing ongoing neck pain, it may be time to stop reaching for the aspirin and begin looking for an interventional solution. Neck pain can run the gamut from the occasional discomfort of being bent over a computer to ongoing agony after a fall. In the middle are causes – some obvious, some mysterious – that must be uncovered before treatment can begin to alleviate or eliminate the pain. Among the most common culprits are: General poor posture, awkward sleeping positions and everyday stress, which can cause the neck to stiffen and ache, as can repetitive tasks involving the uppe ..read more

The statistics on sufferers of chronic pain are staggering – and irrelevant if you’re the one with the pain. The sad fact, though, is that many of these sufferers don’t have to suffer, yet they do, many because they just flat out don’t know what to do or how to go about it. To help address this, this blog looks at our specialty – pain management – with emphasis on when to turn to a pain management specialist, hindrances to avoid in making the move and what to do when you get there. Acknowledge the Impact The National Institutes of Health defines chronic pain as lasting more than three months w ..read more