Abdominal Pain Specialist

What causes abdominal pain?

Your abdomen begins at the lower ribs and ends at your pelvis. It contains reproductive, urinary, and gastrointestinal organs, surrounded by muscles and bones. Any of these structures or soft tissues could suffer damage that results in abdominal pain.

Some conditions that commonly cause abdominal pain include pancreatitis, gastritis, and gallbladder disease. The pain from these disorders tends to be in the top part of your abdomen. Many conditions cause both abdominal and pelvic pain, such as:

• Hernias
• Fibromyalgia
• Kidney infections
• Appendicitis
• Pinched spinal nerves
• Ulcerative colitis
• Crohn’s disease
• Cancer
• Endometriosis
• Neuropathy (nerve pain)

If you have severe abdominal pain, you should contact your primary care provider or the hospital emergency room (depending on the urgency). You should also get help with abdominal pain that persists for more than a few days.

How is abdominal pain diagnosed?

Finding the cause of your abdominal pain involves having a physical examination, symptom review, and a look at your medical history. This initial exam gives your provider a better idea of what’s causing your abdominal pain. 

For example, in some cases, if you have appendicitis, the exam provides all the required information. In other cases, you need further tests.

Depending on what your exam suggests is wrong, your provider selects the most appropriate diagnostic tool from a range that includes:

• Blood and urine tests
• STD tests
• Abdominal X-rays
• Diagnostic laparoscopy
• Stool sample
• Colonoscopy
• Sigmoidoscopy
• Ultrasound scan
• Abdominal CT scan
• MRI

You may need several different tests or diagnostic imaging scans to confirm the cause of your abdominal pain.

How is abdominal pain treated?

Treating the underlying condition causing your abdominal pain is essential and, in many cases, is all that’s required to resolve your problem. Sometimes, though, ongoing pain control can be vital for incurable or long-lasting conditions like cancer.

Metro Anesthesia & Pain Management’s experienced anesthesiologists have undergone extensive acute and chronic pain management training. They help you control pain when there’s no way to resolve it using carefully managed medication. 

They also use treatments like celiac plexus nerve block injections to relieve pain from chronic diseases of the pancreas.

For the most severe cases, patients can benefit from implantable technologies. One is neuromodulation or spinal cord stimulation (using electrical impulses to disrupt pain signals).

Another option is an intrathecal pain pump, which delivers consistent doses of pain medicine to the site of your abdominal pain.

These treatments require you to have a minor surgical procedure to implant the device under your skin.

To benefit from the expertise of the specialists at Metro Anesthesia & Pain Management, call the office today or book an appointment online.