Synopsis:

Chronic Pain Management is a multidisciplinary and multimodal approach to a complex set of problems that produce physical and psychological disabilities with significant costs to the individual and society. The opioid crisis to a large extent is due to overdependence of physicians and patients on this class of medications – i.e. opioids – in managing chronic pain syndromes. This talk will elaborate on the expanding collections of multi-class medications that thanks to better or newly understood molecular mechanisms are being used in novel combinations and applications to rectify chronic pain syndromes. Such categories as GABAergics, TCAs, SSRI / SNRIs, antiarrhythmics, cannabinoids, calcium channel blockers, anti-seizure and other antidepressant classes of chemicals – in recombinant and single applications – promise a new and effective approach to the chemical remediation of such complex chronic pain syndromes. In applying these therapeutics the need for opioid interventions will be minimized. Mechanisms leading to the efficacy of these non-opioid medications and upcoming avenues of molecular research and developments conducive to even more effective remedies will be discussed. Both the professional audience and lay members attending will find the subject matter, content and deliberations presented in this talk interesting and thought-provoking.

About the Speaker:

Mehrdad Michael Massumi, MD is a board-certified specialist in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and a Diplomate of the American Academy of Pain Management. After graduation with honors from the University of Birmingham Medical School, United Kingdom and two years of surgical residency training at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. he undertook and successfully concluded his residency in Rehabilitation Medicine in Seattle, WA in 1988. He remains active at the Harvard Postgraduate Medical Association since 2006. Dr. Massumi has been in practice for thirty years in Maryland. He was the founder or director of many Rehabilitation, Spine and Pain clinics in the Baltimore Metropolitan hospitals. He is a former clinical faculty of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School. He is currently in private practice in Towson, MD and more recently also in Rockville, MD. In his thirty years of practice of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Pain Management Dr. Massumi has treated over 14,000 patients. He is referred patients from community and hospital based physicians of all specialties as well as nurses, physical therapists, pharmacists and other allied healthcare providers. Patients are from Maryland, other States and other countries.

For this lecture: light refreshment will be provided