Dear Holly -
I would be
very concerned about a physician reference appearing in someone’s
first posting on the forum, see #3 above. While no one disputes that Dr. Prager knows his stuff, I have been told that he is not currently accepting medical insurance. And I did not personally have a good experience with him. In that regard, let me refer you to a thread that ran here a little over a year ago.
Good RSD MD In So CAL http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...d.php?t=106250 The discussion is fairly to the point.
And I’m thrilled that
vanityfaire has found a good doctor in Washington State. It would seem to be a miracle. Having gone down this road for a while, with the assistance of an uncle who is a retired psychiatrist in Seattle, I can tell you that the Pacific Northwest is something of a wasteland, Washington State in particular. There, the University of Wash. Medical School's rigid insistence upon the "cognitive behavioral" school of treatment (there is no cure and the patient's worst enemy is self-pity) has recently been enacted into state law, which will become effective in mid-2011 with the adoption of "best medical practice” guidelines, severely controlling the prescription of opioids or narcotics to patients with non-cancer chronic pain. Put it this way, my uncle emphatically told me that he could not recommend any pain specialist in the State of Washington for the treatment of intractable pain, and in particular, CRPS. Then too, they have their new and frankly draconian laws coming into effect on the use of opioids or narcotics by chronic pain patients without cancer, and they are pretty draconian. See, “Move to Restrict Pain Killers Puts Onus on Doctors, by Barry Meier,
New York Times, July 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/bu...hington&st=cse
Moving down the coast, we have the Comprehensive Pain Center of OHSU, with which you must have some familiarity. And just looking at their list of “Diagnostic & Therapeutic Services” on their website suggests that they are not exactly into rocket science.
http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/health/servic...herapeutic.cfm Ditto the “goals” of their Pain Management Fellowship, which still makes reference to training in the use a radio frequency ablation.
http://www.ohsu.edu/anesth/Education/painfellow.htm
And while I can’t speak to Dr. Phillips in Eugene, whom
rsdwife recommended, I note that he is at least board certified in pain management by the American Board of Pain Medicine, the group which certifies pain management fellowships in the U.S. What this means is that, in addition to a doctor’s residency, s/he took a separate one-year fellowship in pain medicine, and then sat for and passed an 8 hour written exam. They are serious people. That said, not all ABPM certified specialists in pain medicine do a lot of work with RSD/CRPS, in fact, most probably treat lower back pain more than anything else: and in fact there are a couple of ABPM certified specialists at OHSU, whom you many have already seen.
(For a search engine of the ABPM certified specialists in pain medicine, go to its Public Directory
http://www.association-office.com/ab...dir/search.cfm You can search by geographic area, gender and specialty of origin. For what it’s worth, you don’t need someone who completed a residency in Physical Medicine for CRPS. There neurology is probably favored, with anesthesiology and psychiatry coming in tied in close second, bearing in mind that a one year fellowships follows whatever prior training the physician received.)
And as set forth in the
Good RSD MD In So CAL thread, above, I and a lot of people are very happy with Steven H. Richeimer, MD, Director of the USC Pain Center:
Steven H. Richeimer, MD
Chief of Pain Medicine, Assoc. Prof. of Anesthesiology and Psychiatry
Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
Director, USC Pain Center
1520 San Pablo Street, Suite 3450
Los Angeles CA 90033
323-442-6202
332-442-6255 (fax)
Dr. Richeimer has advised me that he routinely sees out of town patients for consultations and treatments. In fact, for the first four or five years that I saw him, it was only on a quarterly, consultative, basis, in which he made recommendations to my treating neurologist, who then prescribed my medications. And at our first appointment in 2003, Dr. Richeimer himself referred me for a consultation with Robert M. Schwartzman, M.D., whom I saw the following February, and through whom I was scheduled to go to Germany for the ketamine coma in October of 2004, before the doctors in Germany balked at treating me with ketamine because of preexisting glaucoma: an issue that continues to complicate my treatment to date.
In the Bay Area, Dr. Richeimer suggests that it would be worth flying in to specifically see Michael S. Leong, M.D., who is currently the Interim Clinic Chief, of the Stanford Pain Management Center
http://paincenter.stanford.edu/ Dr. Leong’s contact information is as follows:
Stanford Pain Management Center
450 Broadway Street
Pavilion A, Suite A18
Redwood City, CA 94063
Telephone: (650) 723-6238
Fax: (650) 721-3414
E-mail: msleong@stanford.edu
Admin Contact
Matthew Chen
Telephone: (650) 723-0589
E-mail: mtchen@stanford.edu
Finally, just north of San Francisco, I've also heard good things about a pain management specialist in Marin County:
Robert Hines, MD
Bay Area Pain Medical Associates
3 Harbor Drive
Suite 303
Sausalito, CA 94965
Telephone (415) 380-0480
Facsimile (415) 380-8788
http://www.bayareapainmedical.com/index.html
A close friend of mine, herself a psychoanalyst and whose daughter and son-in law are both physicians, was treated by Dr. Hines for many years and thought the world of him. (I don’t have any inside information on his partner, Michael Moskowitz, MD, MPH.)
I hope this is useful.
Mike