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Chronic Pain Management is
also an area of basically
an explosion. The need is so vast
that it will be almost impossible
to train enough physicians to actually take
on the load. The leaders of this process
are anesthesiologists. For the last 10 to
15 years, anesthesiologists in most western
countries have worked very hard to develop
chronic pain management as a subspecialty.
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This is modeled after the Australian model. The Australians
are decades ahead of most of us in their
management of chronic pain, thanks largely to Dr. Michael
Cousins, excuse me, Professor Michael Cousins,
who is a world leader in developing
chronic pain management programs
across Australia. And now we try to
copy him. In our other countries
we're way behind, but we're working to get there.
And the impact on chronic pain management
and the population is hard to overemphasize.
We're going to release patients from
a prison that they can't deal with.
Get them back into society,
get them back communicating with other people, ambulating,
getting out into the world, and in some cases learning
to live with pain and just getting on with things.
This is a huge challenge. It's very exciting
and I'm really happy that we've managed to get
to this point, and I look forward to the future
of improved development in this area.