What is interventional pain management?
Interventional pain management is a medical specialty that focuses on relieving pain that doesn’t improve with conventional medical treatments. The Rehab Doctors’ team doesn't prescribe an oral medication that puts you at risk for side effects yet seldom helps chronic pain.
The team at The Rehab Doctors accurately diagnoses the cause of your symptoms and then recommends advanced treatments that target the source of your pain. As a result, you can return to your everyday activities and enjoy a better quality of life.
How do interventional pain management treatments work?
The treatments offered by the team at The Rehab Doctors use several different techniques, but they work two basic ways, by injecting corticosteroids at the inflamed nerves to reduce inflammation and by stopping pain signals traveling through nerves.
Many interventional treatments effectively manage your pain by blocking the nerve signals carrying pain messages to your brain. You can only feel pain when your brain gets the message through a sensory nerve.
Techniques that stop pain signals include:
Nerve blocks
The Rehab Doctors’ team injects a local anesthetic at the targeted nerve to interrupt the nerve signals.
Radiofrequency energy
Using a long needle-like probe, The Rehab Doctors’ team uses the heat from radiofrequency energy to wound the targeted nerve. The wound blocks nerve transmission until the nerve regenerates, which usually takes at least six months and often much longer.
Spinal cord stimulation
Your The Rehab Doctors provider implants a small generator under your skin, and then runs a lead wire through the epidural space in your spine, and places the lead wires next to the nerves carrying pain signals. The generator sends a mild electrical impulse through the lead wires, which masks or blocks nerve transmission.
What pain management treatments might I receive?
When performing the following pain management procedures, The Rehab Doctors’ team uses fluoroscopic (real-time X-rays) or ultrasound imaging to guide the needle, placing it precisely at or near the targeted nerve.
These are the treatments they frequently provide at their comprehensive pain clinic:
- Epidural steroid injections
- Facet joint injections
- Sacroiliac joint injections
- Intra-articular or joint injections
- Sympathetic nerve block
- Stellate ganglion block
- Medial branch blocks
- Radiofrequency ablation or rhizotomy
- Occipital nerve blocks
- Piriformis muscle injections
- Trigger point injections
- Bursa injections
- Spinal cord stimulation
- Botox® injections
- Tendon sheath injections
- Muscle injections
To have a full evaluation and get started on the road to living a life without pain, call The Rehab Doctors, or book an appointment online.
