Individualized Pain Treatment Plans


BIDMC Pain Treatment ProcedureDepending on the pain you are experiencing, your specialist at BIDMC's Arnold-Warfield Pain Center will work with you, and members of your medical team, to develop an individualized pain treatment plan.

Our multidisciplinary team includes specialists from anesthesiology, neurology, psychology and nursing. Furthermore, our pain specialists work very closely with primary care physicians, spine orthopedics and neurosurgeons as well as physical therapists.

Your plan may consist of medication treatments, physical therapy and/or rehabilitation, behavior therapy, acupuncture and/or interventional procedures, including:

  • Botox injections
  • Cryoablation
  • Discography
  • Epidural steroid injection
  • Facet joint injection
  • Lumbar sympathetic block
  • Minimally invasive lumbar decompression (MILD)
  • Nerve root block
  • Radiofrequency rhizotomy
  • Shoulder, hip and knee joints injection
  • Spinal cord stimulator
  • Stellate ganglion block
  • Tenotomy procedure
  • Vertebral augmentation (kyphoplasty)

Comprehensive Headache Center

BIDMC's Comprehensive Headache Center offers innovative and personalized treatment for patients with headaches, including migraine, cluster headache, hemicrania continua, post-traumatic headache, trigeminal neuralgia and more. Our headache specialist and neurologist will work with your primary care doctor and other pain specialists to provide drug therapy, integrative therapy or interventional treatments, such as botulinum toxin (Botox) injections, nerve blocks or other injections.

Understanding Your Pain Treatment

If a treatment or a diagnostic procedure is determined to be the next best step to help manage your pain, you will be given information about what you may need to do to prepare for your following visit. This may include stopping certain medicines, not eating or drinking before a specific treatment and arranging for an escort to drive you home afterward.

Please ask any questions about your pain management treatment plan. We want you to understand the potential benefits and risks of all treatments and feel comfortable with your treatment course. It is important that you and your clinical team work as partners to help manage your pain.

Note: The Arnold-Warfield Pain Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center does not routinely prescribe long-term opioids for pain management. If it is decided that opioid medication is the appropriate way for you to manage your pain, our recommendations will be sent to your primary or treating provider. You will not be given a prescription for opioids during your initial visit. If you feel you may have an addiction problem, please discuss treatment options with your primary care provider. The BIDMC Department of Psychiatry also has treatment options for addiction and substance abuse disorder.