Interventional pain treatments
Pain evaluation
Getting to the source of back pain is not always easy. The starting point is usually an office visit to review the history of your back pain problem, do a physical examination, and then to consider any imaging or testing that may be needed and initial treatment steps.
Trigger point injections
Trigger point injections are done for short-term relief of pain related to muscle spasm. Done in the office, these can be helpful when spasm does not get better with at-home treatment.
Epidural steroid injection
An epidural steroid injection is typically done to treat radiating pain from a ""pinched nerve” due to disc herniation, spinal stenosis, or another cause, Epidural and other spinal injections are done with fluoroscopic (X-ray) guidance to allow optimal needle targeting.
Spinal cord stimulation
Spinal cord stimulation is a treatment used for chronic, intractable pain which has not responded to a wide variety of other more straightforward approaches such as medication or simpler interventions. Spinal cord stimulation is most commonly used for radiating pain which has not responded to spinal surgery.
Facet joint injection
Low back pain often arises from lumbar facet joints. Facet joints are the points of contact between the adjacent posterior elements of the spine, Facet joint pain may be approached initially with physical therapy, anti-inflammatories, or facet joint steroid injections,.
Facet joint radiofrequency ablation
Chronic pain arising from the spinal facet joints can often be targeted with radiofequency ablation. In radiofrequency ablation, the nerve supply to the painful facet joint can be “deadened”, which has the potential to durably relieve certain types of chronic back or neck pain.