Opioid Statement

At Cahaba Pain and Spine Care, we understand that chronic pain can be an emotionally, physically, and psychologically draining experience. Our ultimate hope is that we help you improve your function, and decrease you pain, so that you can get back to living your life. We achieve your treatment goals through many avenues, including physical therapy, interventional therapies/procedures, and medication therapy.

Medication therapy includes a spectrum of many medication types. Examples include anti-inflammatories and anti-convulsants. If these more conservative medications fail and the patient’s problem is severe enough, we may consider using opioids to treat pain. Opioids have unique risks which is why they are NOT a first line pain therapy. Additionally, our practice has many patients who are not interested in being on medication at all and we are more than happy to focus on non-medication therapies such as procedures for them.

We recognize these risks, and we are committed to protecting our patients and our communities from these risks. Therefore, we will only prescribe controlled medications for patients whose pain condition and pathology support their use, who meet treatment criteria, who maintain strict compliance with our opioid agreement, and who have failed other more conservative and less risky treatment options. We follow DEA recommendations regarding prescribing opioid medications. (Please see our controlled medication/opioid agreement below for details on requirements).

The physicians and practitioners at Cahaba Pain and Spine Care have decades of experience treating chronic pain. We have successfully treated all types of chronic pain with comprehensive treatments which are minimally-invasive, safe, effective, and have shown clinical efficacy in peer-reviewed literature. We have found that many of our patients are able to reduce or stop their opioids entirely with comprehensive pain treatment.

If you are in chronic pain, and you are interested in decreasing or stopping your opioid medications, we can help, and we can show you how. We look forward to helping you achieve your pain management goals!