Dr. Paul Olson offers chronic pain management services

Dr. Paul Olson is a medical doctor and radiologist, trained at the University of Minnesota.

But he is also a detective.

Olson’s specialty is tracking down the elusive sources of chronic pain and managing that pain through image guided injections. It’s a process that uses a wide-based problem solving approach, he explained, and which involves close collaboration with his patient.

Olson draws on over 12 years of experience working with 60 to 80 patients a month when he approaches a new case. But he points out that it is still important to let the patient’s own experience direct the search.

“We don’t always get it right the first time,” he says. But the magic thing, he adds, is that most things are connected. Together patient and doctor chase the source of pain down “and we don’t quit until we run out of possibilities or we make it go away.”

Olson credits Bigfork Valley with providing the specialized equipment and supportive environment to allow him to offer the pain management clinic. His methods are several years ahead of current practice, he believes, but “we’re doing it now in Bigfork.”

Having the clinic in Bigfork also allows patients to avoid the long drive to Duluth or other large hospitals – something that is hard to do while in pain. And he has seen some almost miraculous results: people who can hardly move getting off the table and “literally dancing across the floor.”

Olson achieves those results through the use of image guided injection; placing an anesthetic or other medication near the source of pain by using real time radiology – a continuously refreshed X-ray image - to guide the needle.

Born in Eveleth, Olson determined to become a doctor at an early age when a close relative died. In medical school at the University of Minnesota, he decided to specialize in radiology during student rotations through different disciplines.

In 1987 he graduated and began post graduate training and post doctoral fellowship work. One of his mentors was a pioneer in injections for the lower back. Another developed a technique for treating facet disease (parts of the spine) with injections, later adopted nationally. He also studied with an international expert on necks and spines and learned processes followed in other countries. Today he is a clinical professor with the University of Minnesota.

Managing pain is not always a textbook process. “The body,” Olson points out, “didn’t read the book.” But to do pioneering work requires the place, the support and the equipment – “the whole system has to have the vision of what this is and what this can be,” he says.