Pain Therapy

Pain limits mobility, performance, and quality of life. In orthopedics, targeted, individually tailored pain therapy is therefore at the heart of treatment. The aim is to provide lasting relief from symptoms, identify causes, and work together to find a way back to greater freedom of movement and safety in everyday life.

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. The word pain comes from the Greek language and means terrible, horrible, agonizing. Pain experiences are always subjective and emotional. A distinction is made between acute pain, which is a biological warning function of the body, and chronic pain. The latter is senseless pain without function. It is important to combat it in good time to prevent the development of what is known as pain memory.

History: The earliest cultural evidence of pain and its treatment are descriptions of headaches from Mesopotamia, 4000 BC, and from a temple inscription in Thebes, Egypt, around 2500 BC. The idea that demons enter the body led to the association of sin with punishment through pain. In Europe, it was not until 1662 that the Frenchman Rene Descartes conducted the first anatomical study (de homine) on pain treatment. However, it was not until the discovery of local anesthetics (Carl Koller, 1884) and morphine (Friedrich Wilhelm Sertümer, 1817) that a breakthrough in the treatment of pain was achieved.

Christian Merettig, M.D. has held the additional title / qualification: Special Pain Therapy from the Berlin Medical Association, a public corporation, since January 2001. Special pain therapists are doctors who, based on their special knowledge and experience, including work in a pain clinic, are able to treat acute and chronic pain.