This September is Pain Awareness Month. Help IASP raise public awareness around pain, pain management, and all the great work that pain professionals do during the month of September (and beyond). https://www.iasp-pain.org/pain-awareness-month
Pain Awareness Month
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COVID-19 – Pain Matrix has now gone almost entirely to online consultations via Skype.
Read MoreWe wanted to let you all know that Pain Matrix has now gone almost entirely to online consultations via Skype. We are following both federal and local requirements for our essential admissions whether they be infusion therapies or operating theatre procedures. We have plans and countermeasures in place to manage...
Migraines in childhood and adolescence: more than just a headache
Read MoreArticle by Dr Michael Vagg Headaches are uncommon in toddlers. But between the ages of three and seven, around 5% to 50% of children experience headaches of some type. From seven to fifteen years, headache prevalence peaks at up to 75%. The vast majority of headaches experienced are tension-type headaches...
Health Check: What Causes Headaches?
Read MoreArticle by Dr Michael Vagg We all get headaches from time to time. In fact, nearly every second person in the world had a headache at least once in the past year. But these can feel very different, depending on which of the nearly 200 types of headache you have....
Knee Pain Before and After — Confidence, Expectation, Disappointment and Hope
Read MoreDr Diarmuid McCoy was an invited speaker at the Annual Scientific Congress of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in Sydney (May 2018). He addressed the post op and Trauma Pain Section on modern management of chronic knee pain before and after total knee replacement. The title of the lecture...
Medical Marijuana/Medicinal Cannabis
Read MoreDr Nash and Dr McCoy have been asked to contribute a paper on the evidence around so called medical marijuana or medicinal cannabis. Please click HERE to see the summary and key messages of this artical.
The International Cadet Class Sailing Team
Read MoreThe international Cadet Class sailing team recently visited Geelong for a training weekend. All the staff of Pain Matrix Geelong are very proud that our colleague Tristan Shipsides, was asked to lead a session of physiotherapy for the entire team. Tristan in addition to having a specific interest in persistent...
Time to stop abusing the NHMRC for ideological purposes
Read MoreArticle by Dr Michael Vagg The release today of the long-awaited NHMRC Statement and Advice on Homeopathy is just the latest in a series of pointless and ideologically motivated exercises that this peak scientific body has been tasked to undertake. We have seen this group of professional scientists sent...
Pain Matrix Eastern & Dynamic Pain Care have Merged together
Read MoreThe Directors of Pain Matrix Geelong (Doctors Michael Vagg, Brett Chandler and Diarmuid McCoy) are delighted to let you know that they have established a private practice of specalist pain medicine in the Box Hill area. Pain Matrix Eastern is located at Suite 8, 28-30 Arnold Street, Box Hill 3128....
Major Pain Conference in Torquay
Read MorePain Matrix is proud that one of our Specialist Pain Medicine Physicians Dr Jacqui Nash has been invited by the Faculty of Pain Medicine at the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, to convene the annual scientific spring meeting in September 2017. Titled “Transcending pain: Ride the next wave”...
How badly do we want to solve this $32bn dollar persistent pain problem?
Read MoreArticle by Dr Michael Vagg This week is National Pain Week so it’s only fitting that I should climb onto the soapbox again in support of people with persistent pain, their employers, workmates, friends, and families. The economic burden of persistent pain in our country is enormous, and the...
When business trumps evidence, dangerous things happen
Read MoreArticle br Dr Michael Vagg Ketamine is a drug which was originally used in anaesthesia, but which is now more often used in managing pain. It acts upon a range of different neurotransmitter systems in the body and it’s not a drug you would expect an average primary care...
Opioids may not be the most harmful pain drugs after all…
Read MoreArticle by Dr Michael Vagg We have seen plenty of media reporting of the harm done by “overprescribing” of opioid drugs for chronic pain (I use the quotation marks because I challenge anyone to identify what the “right” level of opioid prescribing is) but perhaps this hype is misleading....
Hope in a bottle: Use of natural medicine on the rise despite unproven alternative therapies
Read MoreArticle by Mandy Squires (Geelong Advertiser) Featuring Dr Michael Vagg As a Deakin University researcher, Dr Mel Thomson is well placed to sort science from snake oil. Twenty years of academia has given the mum of two the ability to find, read and understand complex scientific papers and...
Pain Matrix patients first in southern hemisphere to trial revolutionary pain relief
Read MoreArticle by Mandy Squires (Geelong Advertiser) Four Geelong patients are the first in the southern hemisphere to be treated with a cutting-edge pain management device. Of the four patients to be treated with the promising percutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (PENS) device at Geelong Private Hospital on Wednesday, two suffered from...
Got chronic pain? Just un-learn to live with it…
Read MoreArticle by Dr Michael Vagg At the recent conference of the Australian Pain Society, I was delighted to see what had come of a very interesting research thread that I had been introduced to a few years ago. It concerns the role of learning circuits in the brain and...