Matthew Slitzky,1 R Jason Yong,2 Giuliano Lo Bianco,3 Trent Emerick,4 Michael E Schatman,5,6 Christopher L Robinson2

1Burke Rehabilitation, Montefiore Health System, White Plains, NY, USA; 2Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; 3Anesthesiology and Pain Department, Fondazione Istituto G. Giglio Cefalù, Palermo, Italy; 4Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Chronic Pain Division, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; 5Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Care, and Pain Medicine, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA; 6Department of Population Health-Division of Medical Ethics, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

Correspondence: Christopher L Robinson, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA, 02118, USA, Email [email protected]

xView the original paper by Dr Slitzky and colleagues

This is in response to the Letter to the Editor

We are in full agreement with your letter titled “Advancing Pain Medicine Through Interdisciplinary Approaches and Platforms” in response to our editorial “The Future of Pain Medicine: Emerging Technologies, Treatments, and Education” that a multidisciplinary approach is necessary.1,2 We know this to be true as any team made up of the same specialty will be limited in their expertise as all specialties that contribute to the specialty of chronic pain each offer a different and necessary skillset. Any paper that results from our global research team (B.E.E) is nearly always composed of numerous specialties and never limited to a single geographical location. If you examine the specialties of our authors, you will notice that the authors come from pain psychology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and anesthesia. Additionally, on our other papers, we incorporate not only the aforementioned specialties but collaborate and involve authors from other fields such as experts in artificial intelligence and virtual/extended reality.2–4 Without a global, multidisciplinary team, our scope and focus would be extremely limited, and our potential to innovate and accomplish would similarly be restricted. You can only go so far alone.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”. — Helen Keller

CLR is a consultant for Augmend Health. GLB reported personal fees from Abbott and Stryker. MSc is a senior medical advisor for Apurano Pharma, outside the submitted work. TE has stock in Vanish Therapeutics. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this communication.

1. Chen Q. Advancing pain medicine through interdisciplinary approaches and platforms [Letter]. J Pain Res. 2024;17:3151–3152. doi:10.2147/JPR.S496971

2. Slitzky M, Yong RJ, Lo Bianco G, et al. The future of pain medicine: Emerging technologies, treatments, and education. J Pain Res. 2024;17:2833–2836. doi:10.2147/JPR.S490581

3. Cerda IH, Therond A, Moreau S, et al. Telehealth and virtual reality technologies in chronic pain management: a narrative review. Curr Pain Headache Rep. 2024;28(3):83–94. doi:10.1007/s11916-023-01205-3

4. Moreau S, Thérond A, Cerda IH, et al. virtual reality in acute and chronic pain medicine: An updated review. Curr Pain Headache Rep. 2024;28(9):893–928. doi:10.1007/s11916-024-01246-2

© 2024 The Author(s). This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License. By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.