If you’re putting off treatment for lower back pain because you fear complex and expensive surgery, you may be living with unnecessary discomfort. Surgery is rarely necessary for back pain. We reserve it only for cases for which the wide range of conservative approaches fail.
Family nurse practitioner Savitri Gopaul and our team at Commonwealth Pain Management and Wellness in Richmond, Virginia, specialize in personalized pain management plans built around your condition and lifestyle.
In this month’s blog, we take a look at five nonsurgical ways to finally find relief from lower back pain. Using some or all of these modalities in a comprehensive pain management plan can greatly improve the quality of your life. Contact our office to learn more.
Your body is made to move, and often movement encourages healing and pain reduction through increased blood flow and the range of benefits that it provides.
Physical therapy offers a disciplined approach to movements that build strength and flexibility, while reducing inflammation and discomfort.
Targeted exercise carries on the benefits started with a physical therapy session. You can extend the benefits with a prescribed series of routines tailored to your lower back pain condition. Increased activity and gaining strength add both conditioning and confidence, two natural pain relievers.
Targeted injections into specific nerve roots as they exit the spine can provide several valuable pain management objectives. We can use them diagnostically to identify the nerves responsible for your pain.
Nerve blocks can reduce inflammation and pain with long-lasting effects, particularly for lower back pain that features radiating symptoms into the legs, such as with sciatica.
The anti-inflammatory effects of corticosteroids is well-known. Injecting steroids into the epidural space of the spinal column is an effective way to reduce pain caused by certain nerve compression issues, like spinal stenosis and herniated discs.
Using radio waves to create localized heat, radiofrequency ablation (RFA) scrambles pain signals by disabling small sections of nerve tissue. In particular, RFA is often the choice to treat pain from facet joint dysfunction.
Before undergoing RFA, we can predict its efficacy by using a nerve root block to confirm the nerves that originate your lower back pain. A positive nerve block experience assures that proceeding with an RFA will produce the results you expect.
A permanently implanted signal generator, a spinal cord stimulator (SCS) uses low-level electrical signals to scramble the impulses that nerves send to the brain. When you have hard-to-treat idiopathic nerve pain, SCS may be the right option.
You undergo a temporary trial to ensure SCS works for you before you receive a permanent implant.
Contact us at Commonwealth Pain Management and Wellness to learn more about personalized pain management. Chances are we can develop a comprehensive regimen of conservative treatments that work together to relieve your burden.
Call us at 804-977-3721 or click here to schedule a personalized pain management consultation today.
