Biomedical Techniques for Pain Management

As a growing epidemic of opioid abuse in the United States can attest, pain, and how to treat it effectively and without serious side effects, is one of the foremost challenges in medicine today.Researchers are looking to new biomedical technologies for pain management, continuing to refine older techniques such as neurostimulation while pushing into new frontiers such as exploring how light delivered to certain neurons can quell pain and how manipulating the gut microbiome might dull sensation. While research is still in the early stages in some of these techniques, what is clear is that doctors may one day soon have many more weapons in their arsenal against pain than they presently do.Read my latest feature story in IEEE Pulse: Feeling No Pain.