Dr PYONG | Kantaphong Thongrong, MD
specialist physician in rehabilitation medicine
Treatment that does not compromise on pain
Kantaphong Thongrong, MD, or Dr PYONG, founder and chief executive officer of PYONG Rehabilitation Group and a specialist physician in rehabilitation medicine, has spoken of the important thinking and philosophy in caring for patients, particularly those with chronic pain, and of seeing the potential of technology to come and change the quality of life of Thai people in the future, with quality of life and happiness as the highest goal.
The highest goal: quality of life and happiness
The real goal of treatment is to reach happiness, of body, of mind, and of spirit, which means quality of life. Not every condition, however, can be cured completely, but we can live with those conditions happily, and can carry on life freely without the condition being a limit. Bringing the patient back to the point where they used to be, able to do everything freely, and preventing recurrence, is what matters in rehabilitation medicine.
"Treatment must not compromise on the patient's pain"
— Dr PYONG
The thinking in treating patients
Planning treatment for each individual patient has its stages and differs in intensity, designed to suit each individual patient in particular, which has to take several factors into account, such as:
> The main cause of the pain or of the health problem, and also what brings the pain about (such as a cause in the structure, the nerves, or the central nervous system)
> The severity of the symptoms (Severity), in that the level and the method of treatment for each patient will differ. A patient with symptoms at the beginning, for example, or whose symptoms are not yet very severe, may begin treatment by changing habits. For symptoms more severe than that, the intensity may have to be raised, using a range of techniques: High Power Laser, Shock Wave, PMS. If it still does not improve, various substances may be injected to help the repair, or it may move on to using a magnetic field to stimulate the area of the brain, or to using medication.
Besides this there are other factors that have to be taken into account as well, such as biomechanical factors, the level of stress, depression or anxiety, beliefs about the pain (Pain Catastrophizing), the social environment affecting recovery, and the response to previous treatment.
A view of the part played by Thai doctors and the health system
Dr PYONG is confident that Thai medical personnel have knowledge and ability at the forefront of the world. Caring for the health of the public therefore has to cover the promotion of health, whether teaching from school level so that the public have enough basic knowledge to care for their own health and stay strong, or awareness of conditions, such as teaching about warning signs so that patients can enter the system of treatment in good time, and also rehabilitation, which brings the patient back to a normal state after illness as quickly as possible and prevents recurrence.
"Treatment does not compromise on pain; but make yourself as well as you can, and one day technology will help you a great deal — it may help you even more than you think"
— Dr PYONG
Dr PYONG believes that technology in the future will come to have a part and will help patients far more than has been thought. But the most important thing is that everyone must know that the best technology genuinely exists, even though access to it in Thailand at present is still limited to large hospitals or medical schools. And since rehabilitation medicine is a science that has to keep close to modern trends and technology, competition and development will make the various devices more effective, and one day the technology will become cheaper, so that every group of people, including those with less to spend, can reach the best treatment.
Being part of presenting new knowledge and technology is one of Dr PYONG's goals, in order to open the view of Thai society to seeing that we too can have a standard of treatment as advanced as the world's, and that in the end every Thai person will be able to reach these things.
Dr PYONG's social media channels
IG
Youtube