Knowing what conditions a pain management Dr diagnoses helps you receive targeted treatment. They personalize your care due to their expertise in spine and neuropathic pain. Physicians use advanced injections and spinal cord stimulators to address diverse patient needs. Here are six conditions a pain management doctor treats:
Neck and Back Pain
Many patients seek a doctor because of debilitating flare-ups in the neck or back. These may be caused by disc degeneration, herniation, or spinal stenosis. These physicians typically offer minimally invasive short-term and long-term relief options while preserving range of motion. Epidural steroid injections, medial branch blocks, facet rhizotomies, and regenerative medicine treat neck and back pain and restore some movement.
Neuropathic Disorders
Tingling, burning, and numbness may indicate nerve impingements. Neuropathy from compression or diabetic damage may present as sensitivity and pain in the hands, feet, arms, and legs. Once physicians pinpoint the source of symptoms from slipped discs, spinal stenosis, tumors, or diabetic neuropathy, they can provide remedies for pain relief. Nerve blocks and spinal cord stimulators interrupt incorrect pain signals to foster recovery without pain medication.
Degenerative Discs
Your pain management doctor offers targeted solutions to heal bulging discs. Epidural injections reduce inflammation around slipped discs to ease leg radiculopathy before it becomes debilitating. Regenerative treatments, like platelet-rich plasma and stem cell therapy, stimulate repair by delivering healing growth factors directly to injured discs that previously sparked nerve pain. Your pain management doctor recommends the least invasive remedy to restore spine health.
Facet Syndrome
Younger and middle-aged patients with facet joint syndrome commonly present with axial neck and back pain. Facet joints along the back of your spine enhance agility but degrade over time from overuse. This degeneration affects nerves in your spine, leading to stiffness. A medial branch block may be used to confirm facet-related pain, which temporarily inhibits nerve signals to the facet joints. If this diagnostic tool relieves you, the doctor confirms the need for treatment. Your pain management Dr can treat facet joint syndrome by providing targeted medial branch blocks and radiofrequency ablations. These remedies address symptoms at their source by interrupting the responsible nerve pathways.
Herniated Discs
A ruptured or herniated disc releases its inner gel contents, which could inflame surrounding nerves and cause shooting pain, numbness, and weakness along your arms or legs. Epidural injections cover the affected nerve in an anti-inflammatory solution to reduce radiculopathy before referring for surgery. They may also use minimal floats to remove herniated disc material.
SI Joint Dysfunction
The sacroiliac joints connect your lower spine to your pelvis and help distribute force and pressure. If these load-bearing joints become misaligned or inflamed, they might cause pain in the lower back, hip, groin, and leg. Your doctor uses fluoroscopic imaging to pinpoint SI joint dysfunction as the pain generator before providing solutions. Single or multi-level SI joint injections directly deliver medication to these inflamed joints to foster healing. Regenerative medicine options also repair the degenerative connective tissues that destabilize those joints.
Consult a Pain Management Dr Today
A pain management doctor can assess and recognize symptoms by reviewing the location of the pain, radiographic findings, and EMG results. Interventional solutions like epidural injections and laminoplasty help relieve symptoms. If you become resistant to all other therapies, spinal cord stimulators block these pain signals. Early diagnosis and treatment may help you avoid spinal stenosis. Visit a specialized physician who will empower you with tailored therapies today.
