1. There are bad surgeons and bad pain physicians. It’s poor form to assume surgeons are good and pain physicians are bad. There are surgeons who cut too much and pain physicians who are too eager to implement these new procedures.
2. If the surgeons claim these new procedures are a money grab then why aren’t they doing them? They could always take the courses, too. From what I’ve seen they tend to stick with what they learned in training and continue using the same company. In my experience some pain physicians are more open to try out different companies and newer procedures. Doesn’t make pain physicians better. Just noting a general observation.
3. I’m not sure why the term proceduralist is used with a derogatory slant. The large majority of pain physicians I’ve met never portray themselves as surgeons.
4. If surgeons want to claim they take care of peri-procedural complications then please manage these patient’s opioids when you say “everything looks fine on repeat imaging”.
5. At the end of the day, there are parallels with what happened with CT surgery and interventional cardiology and I believe surgeons fear this may happen to them.
6. There does need to be a better training for these procedures and collection of outcome data to make sure we are all serving the patient in the correct way.
7. Let’s keep fighting amongst each other while NPs and PAs change their speciality every year.
8. Most of these newer devices are relatively straight forward to use and almost “dummy proof”. Yes I know one can get into serious trouble. However compared to an open approach these minimally invasive approaches have less room for error. Edit: one doesn’t have to be a carpenter to understand how to put a chair and tablet together because IKEA makes it very straightforward for someone who is illiterate to understand it. The beauty is IKEA creating it that way.
9. I personally do not believe pain physicians as a group should be doing TLIFS.
10. In my opinion cavalier anybody (pain or surgeon) isn’t acting in the patients best interest. I see a good way as this: patient sees pain or surgeon, they both talk about what’s best, and patient gets what’s best. Sometimes patients aren’t surgical candidates and thus a pain procedure might be indicated. It’s complementary not adversarial.
