Dr Russell Raath | Chronic Pain Centre, Pretoria

Throughout my medical career as a specialist anesthesiologist my motto, or credo, always was “There must be a better way to this” – whatever “this” was. Most times it turned out that there was a better way so I changed my motto to “There IS a better way to do this – we must just find it”

I have been a medical specialist now for many years. Originally, I specialised in anaesthesiology and from an interest in acute pain came an interest in chronic pain. 10 years ago I took the brave (I think) step to leave anaesthesiology and to start a clinic where we deal with and manage chronic pain only. Any form of chronic pain we will do our best to manage.

I wanted to try and help chronic pain suffers understand that they are not alone, that chronic pain is real and what it is and that there is help from properly trained medical practitioners and that there are things you can do yourself about your chronic pain. The management of chronic pain is not just in a different league to acute pain.