Pain Management

Nerve blocks are often used to manage spine, arm, leg, neck, and buttocks pain. They’re often used during surgery, but can also relieve chronic, long-lasting pain. Nerve blocks can be performed surgically or non-surgically depending on the cause of your pain and your health risks

Patients suffering from back pain due to conditions affecting the facet joints may receive a facet block for relief. This involves the injection of a local anesthetic and steroid into your spine. Facet blocks are often used to reduce inflammation and relieve long-term pain.

Sympathetic nerve block injections into the spine can help relieve chronic pain. They’re often used to treat pain from blood vessel spasms, chronic stomach pain, complex regional pain syndrome, and Raynaud’s syndrome. Sympathetic nerve blocks are typically a safe outpatient procedure, allowing you to return home during the same day you’re treated.

Also known as Racz’s Procedure, this treatment dissolves scar tissue around entrapped nerves in the epidural area of the spine. Epidurolysis involves three injections of local anesthetic and a steroid medication into this area. Patients who develop scar tissue from spinal surgery, spinal disk ruptures, or other causes may particularly benefit from epidurolysis.

Also known as radiofrequency ablation (RFA), this procedure uses heat targeted through a needle to destroy tissue around a nerve that’s sending pain signals back to your brain. RFA can be used to treat a range of chronic pain causes, including arthritis, cancer trigeminal neuralgia, and heart rhythm problems.

An epidural injection delivers an anti-inflammatory steroid medication into the body quickly through an injection into the space outside of the sac of fluid around your spinal cord. Your doctor may recommend an epidural injection if you suffer from chronic pain spreading from your spine down to your hips and legs. This is a minimally invasive outpatient procedure that typically allows patients to return home during the same day they’re treated.

Facet denervation uses radio frequencies to prevent nerves affected by damaged facet joints from sending pain signals to the brain, relieving pain in the neck and back. This joint damage can occur due to age, injury, an inflammatory condition such as rheumatoid arthritis, or even normal, routine activities performed over a long period of time. Facet denervation is a minimally-invasive outpatient procedure.

Also referred to as a discography, a discogram is a diagnostic imaging procedure that allows your doctor to determine whether an abnormal spinal disk is causing you back pain. It’s an invasive procedure that’s typically only recommended when other treatments fail to provide relief, though it’s generally safe. You’ll also be able to return home after the procedure, though you won’t be able to operate a motor vehicle.

Neuromodulation is a minimally-invasive procedure that alters nerve activity through electrical or chemical stimulation to relieve pain originating from specific neurological sites in the body. It typically involves stimulation of the peripheral nerves through a thin lead placed in the epidural space of the spinal cord which delivers frequent, low-voltage electrical impulses to the spine.