Mark J Towers describes how his personal experience of intense pain informed his practice as an interventional radiologist. Plus letters from Stella Acton, Katharine Tylko and a reader who was denied adequate pain relief in hospital
I was an interventional radiologist for 35 years, placing needles and catheters into conscious patients every day. I had three different intensely painful procedures before I qualified in medicine and as a result have had a needle phobia all my life – ironic considering my career. I discovered early in training that hurting anyone was avoidable with conscious sedation and intravenous pain relief, supplemented with generous local anaesthetic administered with long needles as thin as a hair applied to the nerves of the region.
None of my colleagues in the three countries in which I worked did this consistently, if at all. I am aware that it was largely my own experiences that alerted me to the need for adequate pain relief. The medical injunction to do no harm should also mean cause no pain, as this is not difficult to achieve. Some surgeons and radiologists should never be let near a conscious patient. I knew an orthopaedic surgeon who retired at 58 due to cancer. He told me later that he realised he had never given enough pain relief throughout his career. What a sad epitaph for an otherwise decent man and able surgeon.
Mark J Towers
Navan, County Meath, Ireland
