It was one of these kinds of suggestions that were the reasons for this book to be written. The textbook on pain management has been doing a great job. One of the readers commented that it is nice to know all the pain problems and their solutions; but we have been groping in dark about ‘how to start a pain clinic?’, ‘am I qualified to run the unit?’, ‘Will it be a success?’, these and many questions have been troubling us a lot. Probably, these questions were acting like a hindrance to initiate the Pain Clinic process at individual and institution levels.

It was at this stage we felt a book on Pain Clinics which can answer many of these questions should be handy for the clinicians. This book contains sections on what is pain management? How to establish the unit? How to organize the department? What common pain syndromes are seen? How to evaluate them? What are the golden rules of interventional pain management? How to document the proceedings and make the unit economically viable?, so on and so forth. For the benefit of readers, we have given certain brochure templates at the end of the book as Annexures.

We hope you will accept this book with open arms and support the way you have supported ‘Textbook on Pain Management’ for two editions. It has been a great journey so far, we know that we have miles to go before reaching the final destination. We also believe in those words ‘journey of thousand miles also begins with first step’.

I hope this book will stimulate much greater attention to this subject, especially in our medical postgraduate and undergraduate training, which will result in the acceptance by all health care professionals that pain care and prevention should enjoy the highest priority. The practicing pain clinicians should be able to reinforce their knowledge and skill after going through this book.

My sincere thanks to all those people who have read my earlier books for their appreciation of the efforts and guiding me throughout. Their constructive criticism has helped us to sharpen the presentation of the contents.

I would like to express my gratitude to medical faculty members at Kamineni Hospitals, Hyderabad, for their valuable guidance and moral support during creation of this book. I would like to thank them specially for supporting the Pain Clinic cause by taking the unit's help in finding pain relief measures for their patients. We also would like to thank the administrative personnel and other supporting staff for helping the cause of developing this knowledge-building project.

I am indebted to Dr Shashidhar K, Managing Director, Kamineni Hospitals, Hyderabad, for his uninhibited assistance and ever readiness to help at all stages. I would like to thank Dr Prabhakar, COO, Kamineni Hospitals, for his support and vision.

I am extremely grateful to my department members for their valuable suggestions and interacting with me so positively and patiently in the publication of this book.

This book would not have been possible without technology support from ‘Jaypee Brothers’ team lead by Shri Jitendar P Vij. It has been their constant thirst for excellence and perseverance that you are able to see the great finishing for this book. Thanks to people at ‘Jaypee Brothers’ for bringing out this book at an international standard level.

No project, however modest, can be successful without the support of well wishers, who in this case are too numerous to mention individually. However, I am greatly indebted to Late Mr Subba Rao K and Mrs Sudha K for their positive guidance and timely assistance in sorting out problems.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge contributions of my sister Smt Uma, brother-in-law Mr Srinivas and brother Mr Raghavendra Joshi and sister-in-law Smt Nagamani for their financial and emotional help throughout my career.

It will be unfair if I do not thank my wife Dr Sharada Joshi who was willing to bear the brunt of having to cope with the extra load of parenting our young children while I spent a great deal of time in writing this book. My special thanks for my sweet little daughters Godavari and Gowri for showing maturity and understanding beyond their years.