Continuum Audio October 2024 Pain Management in Neurology Issue With Dr. Nathaniel Schuster
In this episode, Lyell K. Jones Jr, MD, FAAN, speaks with Nathaniel M. Schuster, MD who served as the guest editor of the Continuum® October 2024 Pain Management in Neurology issue. They provide a preview of the issue, which publishes on October 2, 2024.
Dr. Jones is the editor-in-chief of Continuum: Lifelong Learning in Neurology® and is a professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Dr. Schuster is an associate professor and associate clinic director in the Center for Pain Medicine and Department of Anesthesiology at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, California.
Additional Resources
Continuum website: ContinuumJournal.com
Subscribe to Continuum: shop.lww.com/Continuum
More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com
Social Media
Host: @LyellJ
Guest: @NatSchuster
Full episode transcript available here
Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum, the premier topic-based neurology clinical review and CME Journal from the American Academy of Neurology. Thank you for joining us on Continuum Audio, a companion podcast to the journal. Continuum Audio features conversations with the guest editors and authors of Continuum, who are the leading experts in their fields. Subscribers to the Continuum journal have access to exclusive audio content not featured on the podcast. If you're not already a subscriber, we encourage you to become one. For more information, please visit the link in the show notes.
Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum: Lifelong Learning in Neurology. Today, I'm interviewing Dr Nathaniel Schuster, who recently served as Continuum's guest editor for our latest issue on pain management and neurology. Dr Schuster is a pain neurologist at the University of California, San Diego, where he is an Associate Professor of Anesthesia. Dr Schuster, welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners?
Dr Schuster: Thank you so much, Dr Jones, for having me. My name is Nat Schuster. I am a pain and headache neurologist at UC San Diego, in the Department of Anesthesiology. I do research, clinical practice, and of course, education of med students through pain fellows, and it's been a pleasure to be the guest editor for this forthcoming issue of Continuum.
Dr Jones: Well, I want to thank you for editing the issue. I want to thank you for putting together, really, an incredible list of topics and, really, expert authors. It's been a long time since Continuum has dedicated significant space in an issue to pain management, which is obviously a hugely prevalent, major problem in society, and I think a big gap for many of us – I know it is for me in my practice, so I've enjoyed learning about it – so I want to congratulate you on the issue and thank you for doing it.
Dr Schuster: Yeah. I was just at AAN a few weeks ago. I was chatting with the person who edited one nearly 20 years ago, a prior pain Continuum issue - so, really glad that for another generation of neurologists that we're going to have this as a reference, and hopefully, it'll serve them in their care of so many patients, because this is just such a ubiquitous problem facing Americans and people around the world.
Dr Jones: Yeah, and a lot's changed in 20 years, so let's get into it. And I will say, you know, now that with our open podcast model, we're interviewing the guest editors, you have, really, an incredible view of the entire field at the moment. And with your reading of the issue and your experience as a pain expert, Dr Schuster, what do you think is the biggest controversy in pain medicine right now?
Dr Schuster: Yes, certainly. I think the most controversial thing facing our practicing neurologists is the opioid issue and how things have been changing with national guidelines since 2016, and, fortunately, we are going to have an article by Dr Friedhelm Sandbrink - who is not only a neurologist, but he is the national director for the VA system - on pain management, opioid safety, and prescription drug monitoring programs. So, it's really wonderful that we have him as an author, and I hope that all the neurologists take an opportunity to read his really important manuscript, because it's dizzying, and, you know, if you're not reading the latest things from people like Dr Sandbrink pretty much every couple of years, you're probably falling behind when it comes to what are current attitudes, what is necessary to be, you know, most responsibly continuing your patients who have been on opioids for so long (many of whom have really debilitating neurologic conditions, nothing else is helpful for them), how are you able to best treat them, best monitor them in the appropriate ways to be doing things in compliance with guidelines.
Dr Jones: And I think monitoring is one of the things that, for neurologists who are uncomfortable with pain management, uncomfortable with the modern role of opioids, I think part of it is, well, what are my accountabilities? What are my responsibilities for doing that? That article will have great insights for our readers. Cannabinoids - that's another one I hear a lot of questions about, and it's obviously evolving. The science is relatively less mature there. From your perspective, what's the role of cannabinoids in a modern pain practice?
Dr Schuster: Yeah. Once again, so much controversy there and so much variability across the US, of course, between institutions, between states - hugely different. And as we speak, it's looking like cannabis will very likely be recategorized as being schedule III, so things are changing, you know, even between right now, probably, and when people are going to be reading the forthcoming Continuum and listening to this podcast. At UC San Diego, we certainly have been on the forefront of doing clinical trials, looking at these clinical trials. They're academic studies using the NIDA drug supply. So, they're not the size and scope of so many of the things that we use that have had industry-funded, large, multicenter studies done, but the research that we've done has shown promise for quite a few different neurologic conditions, ranging from my most recent research was in the migraine space, looking at acute migraine (and I just had the pleasure of presenting that data at AAN a few weeks ago), looking at other things over the years, looking at spasticity pain and multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathy, other peripheral neuropathies. So, in the conditions that we as neurologists so often do treat, that does seem like there is a lot of promise. It's something that in our practice, some of our doctors are more comfortable with it, others are less comfortable. I know, myself, I'm very conservative when I discuss it with patients, because there is, you know, addiction concerns, misuse concerns, abuse concerns - I don't believe that it's to the degree of opioids, and I don't think that the risks are anywhere close to what they are with opioids - and while it's less in opioids, we have other things, fortunately, in this field that don't carry those concerns, and so, I certainly try to use those other options as much as possible before having the discussions about cannabinoids. That said, so many people are using them, and so I'm able to guide them towards, you know, telling that very often, doses that are lower than what they might need to get intoxicated might actually be the doses that are therapeutic, and recommending using high CBD and low THC is probably going to have less side effects, and there's some evidence towards, hopefully, having more therapeutic benefit, especially in our most recent study looking at acute migraine that you want to have that CBD component with the THC.
Dr Jones: That's outstanding. So, we know more than we used to. It still feels like a relatively understudied area (and that's partly been the regulatory barriers to doing science on cannabinoids), so we'll look forward to hearing the latest and greatest in the issue. When we think about in neurology - and I'm thinking here as a clinician - when we think about pain and neurology, we often think about neuropathic pain. And, personally, you know, I see a lot of patients who have peripheral generators for those symptoms of neuropathic pain, but central neuropathic pain is an issue, too - and we have articles on both of those, one on peripheral neuropathic pain, one on central neuropathic pain. For our listeners, what should they know about the differences between those two and the treatment approaches to those?
Dr Schuster: Yeah. So, we fortunately have two wonderful articles - one of them from Dr Charles Argoff looking at central neuropathic pain, another one looking at peripheral neuropathic pain from Drs Misha Bačkonja and Victor Wang. And one thing that I think is really interesting about central neuropathic pain is that for these same patients, we don't need to only be thinking about the central neuropathic pain alone, and not everything that they're experiencing is going to be central neuropathic pain, because they can have "frozen shoulder" - post-stroke shoulder pain is actually a really big deal. Of course, you need to be concerned about things like sacral decubitus ulcers in so many of these patients. And so, they can have nociceptive components in those same patients, and us as neurologists, taking care of these very complicated patients, need to have our eyes open for the central neuropathic components, but also in those same patients, the other pain generators that we can do a lot for.
Dr Jones: So, the musculoskeletal and other generators of pain are relevant. I think that's something that many of us have experienced. Certainly, when I trained, Dr Schuster, the general construct around pain was that it was a really biological phenomenon, and it's an adaptive phenomenon, but it becomes a clinical problem when the pain is unmanageable or out of proportion to the patient's coping skills, and it seems to have evolved - at least in terms of our understanding of it, how it impacts people's lives. It's not just a physical or biological process, right? There are psychological factors here, there are social factors here. How does that inform your thinking about management of pain?
Dr Schuster: Yeah, so, I think that that's one of the most important running themes throughout this issue of Continuum that readers will find, is that there's a movement away from the biomedical model towards the biopsychosocial model in thinking about patients. And, at least for myself, when I was coming out of neurology residency, my training was much more on the biomedical model and on medication treatments. And throughout this issue, what you'll find is discussions of the importance of the biopsychosocial model, having pain psychology as being a component of the treatment for so many of these patients. That medications alone (for many of our most challenging patients) won't be the answer by themselves - that you'll need to have involvement of physical therapy, of pain psychology. And we have an article written by the pain psychologist who I work with at UCSD, Dr Mirsad Serdarevic, which I think will be very interesting for so many neurologists. It's also wonderful that we have an article on facial pain that's written by a neurologist, Dr Meredith Barad, together with a dentist, Dr Marcela Romero-Reyes. So, it really takes a team to treat so many of these very challenging patients who we are treating in our neurological practices.
Dr Jones: Yeah, thanks for that. I realize that with a complex problem, a lot of times you need more than one area of expertise, right? It's a team process and a team effort. When you think about your own practice, Dr Schuster, when do you bring in other specialists or other perspectives in the management of patients with pain?
Dr Schuster: So, one of the articles that I really enjoyed reading in this forthcoming issue of Continuum is the one from Dr Narayan Kissoon on widespread pain syndromes. These patients who have widespread pain syndromes very often are the patients that I'm referring to our pain psychologist. Neurologists can do so much for these patients by making the right diagnosis. So often, these patients might be treated by one specialist for one organ system, another specialist for another organ system, and they can have so many different specialists, and they can be going from institution to institution. And a neurologist is in a really good position to be able to take the full history, put everything together and say, "I think you have a chronic overlapping pain condition. I think you have central sensitivity syndromes" - to be able to talk to them about their central nervous system being amped up, and that there are treatments that we can give them to help to treat these conditions, fibromyalgia and others, that affect so many of our patients who we encounter in neurologic practice. So, the International Association for the Study of Pain now has this term, nociplastic, and some people use the term neuroplastic to talk about these central sensitivity syndromes, and while not all neurologists maybe are hearing those terms used yet in clinical practice, I think it gives us a good framework - and between Dr Kissoon's article, as well as Dr Beth Hogans' article on general principles of pain, I think that those will give the practicing neurologist a lot of good updates as to how our thinking about these patients has evolved.
Dr Jones: I know, as clinicians, we have a very cause-and-effect kind of component to our training, right? Here is the problem, here is the lesion, here is the result, and what do I do about it. I think patients also want to know what is the cause of the pain, and I think it's, maybe, historically been frustrating when someone clearly has pain and there's not a single factor, especially a removable factor, that causes it. So, I think, hopefully, having this language that we can use to communicate it with our better understanding of pain, hopefully that will help. Does that help you in your practice when you're talking to patients, when you explain what's going on? Is that well-received in general?
Dr Schuster: Yeah, you know, I think a lot of doctors are afraid to talk about fibromyalgia, for example, with patients. And what I'm finding in my practice, actually, is that a lot of patients are liberated when they can receive a diagnosis, such as fibromyalgia, that they can read about, they can learn about treatments for it, they can join support groups online and find that they're not alone - indeed, this condition affects 2 to 4% of people, and that very well could be a underdiagnosis. It keeps them from looking to different specialists for each painful body part and potentially having unneeded surgeries - and surgeries that might make things worse. So, I think physicians are understandably concerned because there is stigma - there's stigma around a lot of painful conditions, and there's stigma around some of the treatments that we use to treat these patients - and I think that physicians who are sensitive to that can sometimes be hesitant, but I'm really surprised how often patients are just really appreciative to get the right diagnosis.
Dr Jones: And you mentioned a minute ago that things have changed even since you came out of training, and, obviously, training is really important to know how to manage these problems. In my own world, I've seen, I think, an increase in the interest in pain management as a subspecialty among neurology trainees. There's obviously something that grabbed you, something that pulled you into this field. What's been your path to being a pain specialist?
Dr Schuster: Yeah, so I was a neurology resident at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and fortunately, there, they have a few pain neurologists - and also, in the community, we have a few other pain neurologists as well that I had the great fortune to work with. And I was so impressed, especially those who are doing both pain and headache treatment, that you were able to help so many people treating very high-prevalence conditions - very often, younger patients, people who are going through school, building families - and being able to really reduce their disability, improve their quality of life and the quality of lives of their families is very gratifying. So, I encountered that as a neurology resident. I had their mentorship. And then, I applied for both headache and pain fellowships, and I did both a headache fellowship and a pain fellowship - and I think that that's been a wonderful combination for my career. To have that mix of patients has been really wonderful for preventing burnout. I think having a combination of slightly different patient populations between the headache population and the pain population, as well as, of course, those who have comorbid headache and pain conditions, has been very gratifying to treat people with these conditions. Not that many neurology residents think about doing a pain fellowship, and I wrote, together with my good friend and colleague Jacob Hascalovici, back in 2018 (that was published in the Green Journal), an article on pain neurology as an emerging subspecialty within neurology - and certainly, I would encourage any neurology residents who are interested in potentially pursuing a pain fellowship to read this article. There's such a need for neurologists in the pain field.
Dr Jones: It can be a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? So, obviously, role modeling was important to you, right? You could see the practice when you were in training, when you could still make the decision, and if there aren't enough pain neurologists (which I think we can agree that there aren't), there are probably a lot of trainees who don't have that window into what that practice can be like, which, again, makes it kind of a barrier to folks entering the field - so, hopefully, being more comfortable with it will help our listeners and our readers, you know, integrate this into their practice and see it as a path forward for their own careers if they're interested. One last question for you, Dr Schuster, is - you know, looking into the future, obviously, when we have more options to treat these patients, it's rewarding and engaging and exciting - what do you think the next big thing in pain management is going to be? What should our listeners know that's coming down the road for these patients?
Dr Schuster: Yeah, so the interventional segment and the neuromodulation treatments are really changing a lot these last few years, and I believe are going to keep on evolving with new treatments coming down the pathway. And so, we have two wonderful and really nicely balanced articles on these topics: one of them from one of my former mentors from my UCLA days, Dr Vernon Williams, wrote one on spine pain, and he talks about the interventional pain treatments; and another from Dr Prasad Shirvalkar on neuromodulation for painful neuropathic diseases. And these are really wonderful articles for the neurologist who wants to learn about what treatments are available that, they might not personally be doing these, but that they can refer to colleagues - and these are changing a lot. Epidural steroid injections, for example: helpful for a lot of patients, but there's so much more to the interventional pain field than just that, and I think our practicing neurologists will learn a lot about, "Oh, what can neuromodulation be useful for within the pain field?" And, of course, because there's industry involvement in neuromodulation research, you need somebody who's really good at being very balanced, and I think Dr Shirvalkar did an incredible job about writing a really balanced article about the neuromodulation options that we have for patients with neuropathic pain disorders.
Dr Jones: It's exciting stuff. I think there's a lot to look forward to. I think the update that our readers and listeners will have from this issue will be extremely helpful for themselves in their practice and for their patients. For people who are audiophiles, each of these articles will have a corresponding podcast, so we'll refer people to that. And with that, Dr Schuster, I want to thank you for joining us for a really thorough, fascinating discussion on the field of pain neurology and our brand-new issue on pain neurology. And again, we've been speaking with Dr Nat Schuster, Guest Editor for Continuum's most recent issue on pain neurology. Please check it out. And thank you to our listeners for joining today.
Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information, important for neurology practitioners. Use this link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.