Dr. med. Michael Hartmann FIPP MBA

The specialists in pain therapy, Dr Andreas Baetscher and Dr Michael Hartmann, are specialists in anesthesiology at the Zurich Pain Clinic. Here, the pain therapy specialists work in the Interdisciplinary Pain Diagnostics and Treatment Center.

Among the treatment emphases of Dr Andreas Baetscher and Dr Michael Hartmann are the comprehensive diagnostic investigation of chronic pain, interventional pain therapy and spinal cord stimulation (SCS), as well as multimodal pain therapy, psychotherapy and physiotherapy.

By means of these special techniques, the specialists in pain therapy treat specific conditions such as back pain, headache and post-traumatic pain. Neuralgia (neuropathic pain) and abdominal and pelvic pain and fibromyalgia are also treated by the specialists in pain therapy, Dr Andreas Baetscher and Dr Michael Hartmann, at the Interdisciplinary Pain Diagnostics and Treatment Center.

Pain therapy is an important specialist field in medicine and Dr Andreas Baetscher and Dr Michael Hartmann can treat a wide range of conditions in the specialist field of pain therapy and can optimally ascertain pain states and their causes.

The specialists in pain therapy distinguish between acute pain and chronic pain. Whereas, in particular, chronic pain represents a burden for the patient, acute pain is only an effective warning signal for the protection of the body.

Here, the body sends signals to the brain via the nerve pathways that, for example, a drink is too hot or a movement will result in an injury. Chronic pain states, however, are much more complex and, for this reason, more meaningful from a therapeutic point of view. The precise understanding of the physiology of pain and its transmission within the body is the basis on which the pain therapy specialists are able to make a diagnosis. Since this physiology is different from patient to patient, targeted questioning by the pain therapy specialists is immensely important in order to be able to understand the individual’s pain and its origin.

Generally, pain can be seen as a practical device of nature, because it is only a momentary warning signal. It helps the body to differentiate good effects from bad effects on the body and the mind. But if pain becomes a chronic state, it is no longer a warning signal, but develops into an illness.

Here, as specialists in pain therapy, Dr Andreas Baetscher and Dr Michael Hartmann in Zurich differentiate between peripheral and central sensitization. Thus, nerve cells are described, which react over-sensitively where there is long-persistent pain. This means that these nerve cells may actually send pain signals to the brain when there is no pain at all. The correlations leading to this sort of condition are different for each patient and are affected by their everyday situation. For this reason, the patients, their personalities and their everyday life are in the foreground for Dr Andreas Baetscher and Dr Michael Hartmann at the Zurich Pain Clinic.

Chronic pain can only very infrequently be traced back to a single cause. In most cases, different factors in different areas of everyday life play a role in this. By means of the so-called bio-psychosocial model, which underlies the concept of the Pain Clinic in Zurich and the Interdisciplinary Pain Diagnostics and Treatment Center of Dr Andreas Baetscher and Dr Michael Hartmann, the interaction between the pain and its cause can be better understood. So, effective treatment of the patient by the pain therapy specialists becomes more possible.

Understanding the causes is particularly important to the specialists in pain therapy because the individual factors can influence and reinforce each other.

Dr Andreas Baetscher and Dr Michael Hartmann in Zurich treat pain in the musculoskeletal system, neuropathic pain, cervical spine distortion trauma, pain syndromes, headache syndromes and abdominal pain in an entirely targeted fashion.