Treatment Options
To relieve and control pain, the Pain Management Center offers:
- Nerve and facet blocks: Injections into spinal joints to reduce spine pain.
- Epidural or spinal opioids or steroids: Injections into the spinal area to lessen inflammation and pain.
- Implantable narcotic pumps: These pumps, placed inside the body, deliver a precise dose of pain medicine. They are often used to relieve cancer pain.
- Baclofen pumps: These are used to relieve both severe pain and muscle spasms by implanting a small pump and medicine-filled reservoir in the body. A thin tube, or catheter, goes from the pain pump to the spine where the medication is released into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord.
- Spinal cord stimulation: This technique can block the sensation of pain with an electrical device implanted in the body. It uses a mild current to replace the feeling of pain with a sensation similar to the feel of running water. Spinal cord stimulation is used when back surgery fails, for peripheral neuropathy (severe pain in the arms, legs, hands or feet), and when severe 'phantom limb' pain follows amputations.
- Neurolytic blocks: These control pain by destroying specific nerves.
- Patient-controlled anesthesia: Often used after surgery, patient-controlled anesthesia, or PCA, lets patients give themselves a pre-determined dose of pain relieving medicine intravenously.
- Cryoneurolysis/cryoablation: A technique that relieves pain by using cold to destroy nerve tissue.
- Radiofrequency lesioning: With a probe that generates a microwave, pain specialists can destroy nerve tissue and relieve pain.
- Facet injections: Injection of a pain killer or a drug into a particular point in a spinal joint to reduce inflammation.
- Trigger point injections: These pain killers can be injected throughout the body to reduce pain.
- Botox injections: Injections of this powerful drug relieve pain by numbing a nerve.
- Peripheral neurolysis: Neurolysis permanently destroys a nerve ending to bring relief from severe pain.
- Non-narcotic medication: Relieves cancer pain.
- Epiduroscopy: Using a special endoscope, the pain specialist can enter the spinal canal to remove scar tissue and take painful pressure off nerves.
- Discography/annuloplasty: Discography uses a tiny scope to look at spinal damage, then annuloplasty uses a needle to produce heat and destroy disc defects that cause pain.
- Nucleoplasty: An advanced treatment for spinal pain that reduces the size of a damaged disc to relieve pain-causing pressure on nerves.