The Lahey Clinic in Boston, Mass.

Dr. Andrew G. Kowal on Pain Research at The Lahey Clinic, Boston, Mass.

ByABC News
December 21, 2007, 5:46 PM

— -- Hi, my name is Dr. Andrew Kowal. I'm from the Lahey Clinic. Let me share with you some of the exciting stuff we're doing in our pain center. I'm the director of the pain clinic at the Lahey Clinic.

We are trying to discover ways that we can help patients use less opiate medications, like morphine or oxycontin. One of the projects I'm involved with currently in leading is using a medicine called Lyrica to help reduce the amount of pain medications patients take with chronic pain. And what we're trying to do is to show that this medicine may help people stop these other medicines, like morphine, that have all kinds of side effects that are not good. In fact, some of these medicines may cause pain -- opiates may actually increase pain by sensitizing your brain. So that's what we're involved in at The Lahey Clinic Pain Management Center.