Resolving persistent back pain and neck pain can be complex. Your pain might not respond sufficiently to your first attempts at treatment. Instead, the pain sticks around, depressing your mood and making getting through each day challenging.
At Total Spine Institute, we know it’s important for you to find pain relief that works. And we know how important it is to protect our patients from potentially addictive pain relief medications. That’s why Dr. Andrew Fox and Dr. Ryan Mattie offer interventional pain management treatments like nerve blocks and pain injections.
Dr. Fox and Dr. Mattie treat new and existing patients from their locations in Sherman Oaks and Calabasas, California. If you think you could benefit from pain injections, but aren’t sure which procedure is right for you, read this guide and talk to your provider at Total Spine Institute about your pain management treatment plan.
Pain injections are an effective way to address a wide range of spinal conditions. The team at Total Spine Institute uses ultrasound guidance to complete your injection procedure. With state-of-the-art technology, we can place your injection exactly where you most need pain relief. You don’t feel undue discomfort during the procedure.
Pain injections may work for patients with degenerative disc disease, a herniated spinal disc, or spinal narrowing. Injection therapy is also effective for osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis pain control.
And, if you have pain related to a pinched nerve in your spine, injection treatments can give your system the relief you need for nerve pain to settle down.
Often, pain injections form an essential part of an overall pain management strategy. You may need pain injections to get you started with physical therapy and on your way to real healing. We don’t typically recommend pain injections as the first treatment to explore. Pain injections are a way to help you deal with pain that hasn’t responded to conservative approaches.
Pain injections take only 20 minutes or so to deliver and can give you results lasting several months or longer.
At Total Spine Institute, we offer several types of pain injections. All can be targeted to different areas of your spine, including epidural injections, facet joint injections, and sacroiliac joint injections, to provide the pain relief you need.
The local anesthetic medication in nerve block injections works quickly and effectively to numb the nerves in a targeted area of your spine.
Not only does a nerve block give you instant pain relief, but it also gives your provider at Total Spine Institute more information about the exact location of your underlying pain problem. Sometimes, nerve blocks are used as a diagnostic tool.
Corticosteroid medications have powerful anti-inflammatory effects. Targeting an injection of corticosteroid medication toward an inflamed area of your spine or neighboring tissues can provide long-term pain relief.
You may experience some discomfort right after your injection treatment and may need a few days to experience your full pain relief results with this treatment option. Corticosteroid injections should be spaced at least six weeks apart, with no more than three injections in the same treatment area within a year.
In some cases, the pain management experts at Total Spine Institute may recommend using pain injections containing a combination of a corticosteroid and anesthetic. This approach adds the benefits of corticosteroid injections to nerve block treatment. Talk to your provider to find out if this combined pain injection could be right for you.
For support determining the best type of pain injection for you, contact the team at Total Spine Institute online or over the phone today and schedule your initial consultation appointment.
