Very few doctors have received the training so necessary to treat chronic pain!! Medical schools have offered very little about the treatment of chronic pain to their medical students. Only medical students, who have specialized in anesthesiology with an additional specialization in chronic pain, have the knowledge that is required to prescribe and titrate pain medications and to tailor these pain medications to patients, who have differing pain medication needs.
The following is a more complete list of the known causes of adhesions: Adhesions can develop any time there is internal bleeding (from an injury or surgery), from the pinching of blood vessels or from inflammation. Commonly, adhesions result from the most routine activities of surgery including cutting, coagulation and suturing. Foreign materials such as sutures, lint from sponges or powder from surgical gloves can cause an inflammatory response that can result in adhesions. Finally, adhesions can form from anything that causes an inflammatory response, such as endometriosis, radiation therapy, pelvic inflammatory disease, infection and even from a seat belt injury as the result of a car accident!!.
Because ARD is not recognized as being either a disease or a disorder, this is the source of the problem!! If doctors do not believe that adhesions can and do cause severe problems for its victims, then it becomes very easy for doctors to discount their patients complaints of chronic pain by telling them adhesions do NOT cause pain!!
Surgery for adhesions (adhesiolysis) is one of the most difficult, most time consuming and most risky surgical procedures that a surgeon has to perform!!! To make matters worse -- because adhesions are not recognized as a disease or disorder -- surgeons are very poorly reimbursed for performing these procedures. Surgeons are well aware of the risks involved in adhesiolysis procedures; and for that reason they really do NOT want to take any chances -- considering they could be sued if they should inadvertantly cause harm to their patient.
It is the mission of the International Adhesions Society to do what it can to help create awareness of adhesion related disorder (ARD); and one day ARD will be granted the recognition needed for ARD to be included along with all of the many other recognized diseases and disorders. This is what the International Adhesions Society is all about!!