What is interventional pain management?
Interventional pain management is an approach to relieving acute and chronic pain. It uses a combination of treatments to achieve optimal results for patients.
Using interventional pain management techniques, the team at Pacific Sports and Spine addresses the causes of your pain rather than relying on powerful and potentially addictive opioid medications.
While medication does have its place, painkillers that mask the problem don't offer a long-term solution. However, interventional pain management addresses the root cause of your pain.
In addition to their extensive experience in interventional pain management, the team at Pacific Sports and Spine plays a key role in cutting-edge clinical trials, helping to develop new and better treatments.
What conditions can benefit from interventional pain management?
Interventional pain management is appropriate for most pain, but it's especially useful in treating neuromusculoskeletal disorders.
These conditions affect your nerves, bones, joints, muscles, and connective tissues. Common examples include:
- Osteoarthritis
- Bursitis
- Degenerative disc disease
- Facet joint syndrome
- Spinal stenosis
- Herniated discs
- Sciatica
- Headaches and migraine
- Sports injuries
- Neuropathic pain
Neuropathic pain results from nerve damage or dysfunction, which may be a complication of diseases like diabetes (which causes diabetic neuropathy) or shingles (which causes post-herpetic neuralgia). Neuropathic pain can also develop for no identifiable reason.
What does interventional pain management involve?
There are numerous treatments that the interventional pain management experts at Pacific Sports and Spine can use to relieve your symptoms. These include:
Steroid injections
Spinal and joint injections most often use a combination of local anesthetic and steroid medication. The anesthetic temporarily numbs the pain in your back or joints, while the steroids reduce inflammation and offer longer-term relief.
Possibilities include facet joint injections, thoracic epidural steroid injections, medial branch blocks, celiac plexus blocks, lumbar sympathetic blocks, lumbar transforaminal epidural steroid injections, and piriformis injections.
Regenerative medicine
Injections of healing cells that occur naturally in your body are an exciting development in interventional pain management. Regenerative medicine techniques at Pacific Sports and Spine include stem cell therapy and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy.
Neuromodulation and radiofrequency ablation
Neuromodulation involves having a spinal cord stimulator implant that alters the signals going from your spine to your brain. Radiofrequency ablation uses radio wave energy to destroy pain nerves in your spine and joints.
Minimally invasive procedures
Pacific Sports and Spine uses advanced procedures such as vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty for vertebral compression fractures, Vertiflex™ Indirect Decompression System for lumbar spinal stenosis, the Intracept® Procedure for chronic low back pain, and the LinQ™ system for sacroiliac joint fusion.
Find out how you could benefit from interventional pain management by contacting Pacific Sports and Spine. Call or book an appointment online today.
